Dr Anil Day
Dr Anil Day is a plant molecular biologist and synthetic biologist based at the University of Manchester, where he has spent the majority of his career developing tools and techniques for engineering plant organelle genomes. He holds an MA in Biochemistry (with Chemical Pharmacology) from the University of Oxford, a PhD from the John Innes Centre at the Norwich Research Triangle, and undertook postdoctoral research as an EMBO Long Term Fellow at the Department of Molecular Biology in Geneva, Switzerland. He subsequently worked in the Genetics Laboratory at the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford before joining the University of Manchester, where he is a faculty member in the School of Biological Sciences.
Dr Day's research centres on transplastomic technologies — the introduction of foreign genes and precise edits into plastid genomes, primarily chloroplasts and mitochondria. His laboratory has developed a portfolio of techniques for targeting, inserting, and modifying organelle DNA, including a marker-free approach to plastome engineering that enables the seamless introduction of transgenes, point mutations, and gene deletions without extraneous DNA. The Day Lab's work spans foundational research into organelle genome function and maintenance as well as applied projects exploring the expression of useful proteins and crop traits through plastid transformation. His published output covers areas including chloroplast genome maintenance, DNA replication, organelle biosynthesis, and the development of error-prone organelle DNA polymerases as research tools. He has collaborated extensively with Dr Junwei Ji, including joint work on organelle DNA polymerase systems published in Nucleic Acids Research.
Dr Day is a co-founder of Cytotrait — originally incorporated as Plant Organelle Technologies — a University of Manchester spinout company built on intellectual property developed jointly by himself and Dr Ji. The company's core platform, MOSS (Mutant Organelle Selection System), applies the principles of Dr Day's research to achieve rapid, marker-free homoplasmy in crop plant organelles — enabling the engineering of high-value agricultural traits with the precision and regulatory advantages that organelle targeting provides. Cytotrait was developed with support from the University of Manchester Innovation Factory, which guided the founders through IP strategy, company formation, and investor readiness.
In March 2026, Cytotrait closed a £3 million seed round led by Northern Gritstone, with participation from the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund and the Northern Universities Ventures Fund. The funding will support research programmes targeting wheat, maize, potato, and canola, with applications including improved yield, resilience, new food traits, and enhanced carbon sequestration. Dr Day's foundational scientific work underpins the entire MOSS technology platform, making him one of the key scientific originators of Cytotrait's commercial proposition.
