Research Interests
Charlotte is a group leader with interests in disease resistance characterisation on a wide range of crops and understanding how pathogens interact with hosts.
Charlotte completed her PhD at the University of Warwick, studying the ‘deployment and mechanism of broad-spectrum resistance to turnip mosaic virus in Brassica rapa, Chinese cabbage’. Before transferring to NIAB Cambridge Crop Research she worked at NIAB EMR, where she focused on improving durable disease resistance in horticultural crops (mostly in strawberry and apple) and studying pathogenicity of the associated Phytophthora spp.
Current Research Projects
Current phase 2019-2023 UK Cereal Pathogen Virulence Survey (UKCPVS); Funding: Defra and AHDB; CN involvement from July 2021
2018-2022 RustWatch: A European early-warning system for wheat rust diseases; Partners: Aarhus Universitet (lead), NIAB and 23 other research organisations and industry; Funding: EU Horizon 2020; CN involvement from July 2021
2017-2022 The nature of resistance to Neonectria ditissima in apple species; Partners: NIAB (lead) and Worldwide Fruit; Funding: BBSRC BB/P000851/1 (CN Researcher Co-I)
Supervision of students
- 2021-2022 Determining the main disease risks to wild and cultivated Vaccinium species in the UK – Principle Supervisor of MRes Student Rosie Latham (University of Warwick, funded by Royal Horticultural Society
- 2020-2024 Engineering tolerance to Botrytis in soft fruit crops – Principle Supervisor of PhD Student Finlay Bourquin (University of Nottingham, Collaborative Training Partnership for Fruit Crop Research funded by BBSRC and Industry)
- 2020-2023 Incidence, pathogenicity and management of Phytophthora root rot of raspberry in the UK – Principle Supervisor of PhD Student Eithne Browne (Harper Adams University, CTP-FCR funded by BBSRC and Industry)
- 2018-2022 Investigating durable resistance to Phytophthora cactorum in strawberry and apple – Principle Supervisor of PhD Student Matteo Luberti (University of Reading, CTP-FCR funded by BBSRC and Industry)
- 2015-2019 Characterising Phytophthora fragariae, the causative agent of strawberry red core disease – Co-supervisor of PhD Student Thomas Adams (University of Reading)
Publications
Recent publications
NELLIST C.F. (corresponding), Armitage A.D., Bates H.J., Sobczyk M.K., Luberti M., Lewis L.A. and Harrison R.J. (2021) Comparative analysis of host-associated variation in Phytophthora cactorum. Frontiers in Microbiology 12, 1572.
Adams T.M., Armitage A.D., Sobczyk M.K., Bates H.J., Tabima J.F., Kronmiller B.A., Tyler B.M., Grünwald N.J., Dunwell J.M., NELLIST C.F. (corresponding) and Harrison R.J. (2020) Genomic investigation of the strawberry pathogen Phytophthora fragariae indicates pathogenicity is associated with transcriptional variation in three key races. Frontiers in Microbiology 11(490), 1-17.
NELLIST C.F., Vickerstaff R.J., Sobczyk M.K., Marina-Montes C., Wilson F.M., Simpson D.W., Whitehouse A.B. and Harrison R.J. (2019) Quantitative trait loci controlling Phytophthora cactorum resistance in the cultivated octoploid strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa). Horticulture Research 6(60), 1-14.
Armitage A.D., Lysoe E, NELLIST C.F., Lewis L.A., Cano L.M., Harrison R.J. and Brurberg M.B. (2018) Bioinformatic characterisation of the effector repertoire of the strawberry pathogen Phytophthora cactorum. PLOS ONE, 13(10), e0202305.
NELLIST C.F., Qian W., Jenner C.E., Moore J.D., Zhang S., Wang X., Briggs W.H., Barker G.C., Sun R. and Walsh J.A. (2014) Multiple copies of eukaryotic translation initiation factors in Brassica rapa facilitate redundancy, enabling diversification through variation in splicing and broad-spectrum virus resistance. The Plant Journal, 77(2), 261-268.