Manchester biotechnology company Cytotrait has secured £3 million in seed funding led by Northern Gritstone, with additional participation from UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund and Northern University Ventures Fund.
In the announcement on Monday, Cytotrait said that the funding will support the next phase of development for its proprietary Mutant Organelle Selection System, or MOSS, technology, building on early research data and enabling the launch of new programs focused on improving traits in major crop species.
Initial efforts will focus on wheat, maize, potato and canola across Europe and North America, which Cytotrait will use to explore improvements in crop yield and resilience, the development of new food traits and opportunities to support more sustainable agricultural practices, including enhanced carbon sequestration.
Cytotrait’s MOSS platform enables homoplasmy, delivering genes and gene edits directly into chloroplasts and mitochondria so that genetic modifications are present across all organelles within a cell or plant. This allows engineered traits to achieve strong, localized expression while reducing issues such as transgene-related phytotoxicity.
“Food security and sustainability are two of our most pressing global challenges and issues that we must be prepared to face today to ensure we are ready to meet the needs of tomorrow. We developed MOSS with those challenges in mind — a unique crop engineering solution capable of streamlining regulatory pathways and generating crops with new, enhanced, and more carbon-conscious traits,” a spokesperson for Cytotrait said in a statement.
