About AMYBO

Sustainable Protein for All

• Sustainable Protein: protein made without the land, water and emissions that livestock needs. We are working on hydrogen-oxidising bacteria (HOB): microbes that turn hydrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide into protein, so with water and electricity they make protein from air.
• For All: not-for-profit and open source, so the designs are free and anyone, anywhere can make protein locally.

Mission statement

AMYBO exists to end the climate crisis, world hunger and poverty by making delicious, wholesome, sustainable protein universally accessible.

• Ending the climate crisis: livestock produces 12–17% of global greenhouse gas emissions (FAO, 2023; Twine, 2021). Protein made from air and renewable electricity needs a fraction of that.
• Ending world hunger: livestock uses 83% of the world’s farmland but supplies only 18% of its calories (Poore & Nemecek, 2018). Protein made from air needs no farmland and can be made anywhere, independent of weather, soil and season.
• Ending poverty: affordable, open designs, so protein can be made, owned and sold locally.
• Delicious: it has to be, or nobody will switch. People who have tasted the HOB proteins made so far, from two different bacteria, describe them as mild to almost tasteless (Green Queen and Sifted on Solein; Gigazine on Air Protein), which leaves the flavour to the cook. That is why we want chefs involved.
• Wholesome: Solein, made from one HOB strain, has as much protein as pea protein isolate and all the essential amino acids adults need, though lab digestion tests rate its digestibility as moderate (Caliskan et al., 2026). It has been an approved food in Singapore since 2022 (Singapore Food Agency) and is sold in the US; its EU and UK novel food applications are still being assessed.
• Sustainable protein: powered by solar panels, HOB can make over ten times as much protein per hectare as any staple crop (Leger et al., 2021), using about a tenth of the water of soya (Sillman et al., 2019). Electricity is the biggest factor in their carbon footprint, so it needs to be renewable (Järviö et al., 2021).
• Universally accessible: AMYBO is a not-for-profit, open source community. The designs are free and the kit is kept cheap enough to build, own and run locally.

How we work

Everything goes on GitHub and the forum: the designs, the protocols, the results and the mistakes, so that anyone can build on them. We think open source is also the best protection against a good idea being bought and shelved. And we try to keep the kit cheap, because if it costs more than a small lab or a keen amateur can afford, only well-funded labs will use it. That is why the electroPioreactor, PioFlo and OpenValve exist.

AMYBO is community-led. Biotechnologists, chefs, coders, creatives, engineers, makers, microbiologists, nutritionists and plenty of people who are none of those things all have a part to play. It is currently a not-for-profit trading name of andeye Ltd, so that it can sign contracts and be paid grants; the name and the logo are placeholders for the community to fill in, as the brand page explains.

Where we are

Imperial College London and the University of Edinburgh are using our kit under the CARMA Hub project, and Edinburgh has the first AEP 0.2 kits. Students built the first units themselves. The medium, the plugin and the designs are all public. What we don’t yet have is a strain we can call our own, and that is the next search: sampling rivers and fens and seeing what grows. If you’d like to help with that, get involved.

Get involved

We need your help

We need biotechnologists, chefs, coders, creatives, engineers, enthusiasts, environmentalists, makers, medics, microbiologists, nutritionists, others.

Every page has an edit link, so please add more, fix what’s wrong, or just get in touch.

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History

Our first video

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Our first video.