Professor Pat Heslop-Harrison

Professor Pat Heslop-Harrison co-leads the University of Leicester’s research group investigating the genomics and evolution of plants and animals with a focus on improving food security and delivering the United Nations UN Sustainable Development Goals. Our collaborative work is being used to help develop new crops, improve the environment and conserve biodiversity, as well as address fundamental issues in plant and animal evolution. We are driving positive change when it comes to the sustainability of our planet.

How many societal problems can be solved just through an organism’s design? With plants, the answer is a lot. Professor Heslop-Harrison's research group studies biodiversity and evolution along with traits in crops and farm animals, and is investigating how the biodiversity can be used to improve the sustainability and production of farms. We can find ways to make a farmer's crops immune to disease, we can create crops that provide a higher yield, and we can create grasses that provide more sustainable food for cattle, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Using genetics, we can help to both adapt to and mitigate climate change, while maintaining yields which feed the world's population, while meeting the challenge of reducing damage to the environment.

Molecular cytogenetics, genomics, chromatin, biodiversity and its exploitation, bioinformatics, retrotransposons, repetitive DNA structure, evolution and function, cereals, bovids, model plant and animal species, tropical crops.

Biswas MK, Ahmed B, Hijri M, Schwarzacher T, Heslop-Harrison JS. 2025. Chloroplast genome diversity and marker potentials of diverse Ensete ventricosum accessions. International Journal of Molecular Sciences IJMS 26(19): 9561.  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms26199561 

Shu X, Lu R, Heslop-Harrison P, Schwarzacher T, Wang Z, Qin Y, Wang N, Zhang F. 2025. Unraveling the evolutionary complexity of Lycoris: Insights into chromosomal variation, genome size, and phylogenetic relationships. Plant Diversity47: 931-943.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2025.06.010.

Dwivedi SL, Vetukuri RR, Kelbessa BG, Gepts P, Heslop-Harrison P, Araujo ASF, Sharma S, Ortiz R. 2025. Exploitation of rhizosphere microbiome biodiversity in plant breeding. Trends in Plant Science 30(9): 1033-1045. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2025.04.004.

Gui X, Cui D, Tian Y, Schwarzacher T, Heslop-Harrison JS, Liu Q. 2024. Genome-wide identification of Lectin Receptor-Like Kinases gene family in Avena sativa and their roles in salt stress tolerance. International Journal of Molecular Sciences IJMS 25(23): 12754 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms252312754.

Laborne AM, Barrios-Leal DY, Heslop-Harrison JS, Manfrin MH, Kuhn GCS. 2024. Genome location, evolution and centromeric contribution of satellite DNAs shared between the two closely related species Drosophila serido and D. antonietae (repleta group, buzzatii cluster). Chromosoma 134(1): 1. /https://doi.org/10.1007/s00412-024-00827-9 

Rocha-Reis DA, Rodrigues-Oliveira IH, Pasa R, Menegídio FB, Heslop-Harrison JS, Schwarzacher T, Kavalco KF. 2024.  In silico characterization of satellitomes and cross-amplification of putative satDNAs in two species of the Hypostomus ancistroides complex (Siluriformes, Loricariidae). Cytogenetic and Genome Research 164(2): 121-132. https://doi.org/10.1159/000539429 

Dwivedi SL, Heslop-Harrison P, Amas J, Ortiz R, Edwards D. 2024. Epistasis and pleiotropy-induced variation for plant breeding. Plant Biotechnology Journal 22: 2788-2807. https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.14405 

Cui D, Xiong G, Ye L, Gornall R, Wang Z, Heslop-Harrison P, Liu Q. 2024. Genome-wide analysis of flavonoid biosynthetic genes in Musaceae (Ensete, Musella, and Musa species) reveals amplification of flavonoid 3’,5’-hydroxylase. AoB Plants 16(5): plae049. https://doi.org/10.1093/aobpla/plae049 

Liu Q, Xiong G, Wang Z, Wu Y, Tu T, Schwarzacher T, Heslop-Harrison JS. 2024. Chromosome-level genome assembly of the diploid oat species Avena longiglumis. Scientific Data 11: 412. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03248-6 

Liu Q, Ye L, Li M, Wang Z, Xiong G, Ye Y, Tu T, Schwarzacher T, Heslop-Harrison JS. 2023. Genome-wide expansion and reorganization during grass evolution: from 30 Mb chromosomes in rice and Brachypodium to 550 Mb in Avena. BMC Plant Biology 23:627. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-023-04644-7

Jones A, Bridle S, Denby K, Bhunnoo R, Morton D, Stanbrough L, Coupe B, Pilley V, Benton T, Falloon P, Matthews T, Hasnain S, Heslop-Harrison JS (Pat), Beard SJ, Pierce J, Pretty J, Zurek M, Johnstone A, Smith P, Gunn N, Watson M, Pope E, Tzachor A, Douglas C, Reynolds C, Ward N, Fredenburgh J, Pettinger C, Quested T, Cordero JP, Mitchell C, Bewick C, Brown C, Brown C, Burgess P, Challinor A, Cottrell A, Crocker T, George T, Godfray C, Hails R, Ingram J, Lang T, Lyon F, Lusher S, MacMillan T, Newton S, Pearson S, Pritchard S, Sanders D, Bellamy AS, Steven M, Trickett A, Voysey A, Watson C, Whitby D, Whiteside K. 2023. Scoping potential routes to UK civil unrest via the food system: results of a structured expert elicitation. Sustainability 15(20): 14783. https://doi.org//10.3390/su152014783

Liu Q, Cui D, Tian Y, Wang Y, Rouard M, Heslop-Harrison JS, Schwarzacher T, Wang Z. 2026. Haplotype-resolved genome assembly of Musella lasiocarpa reveals the critical role of structural variations in chromosomal and genome evolution. Genomics 118(2): 11120https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ygeno.2026.111210 

Masters LE, Tomaszewska P, Hackel J, Zuntini AR, Schwarzacher T, Heslop-Harrison JS, Vorontsova MS. 2024. Phylogenomic analysis reveals five independently evolved African forage grass clades in the genus Urochloa. Annals of Botany. 2024 Feb 14:mcae022. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcae022 

Balzter H, Macul M, Delaney B, Tansey K, Espirito-Santo F, Ofoegbu C, Petrovskii S, Forchtner B, Nicholes N, Payo E, Heslop-Harrison P, Burns M, Basell L, Egberts E, Stockley E, Desorgher M, Upton C, Whelan M, Yildiz A. 2023. Loss and damage from climate change: knowledge gaps and interdisciplinary approaches.  Sustainability 15: 11864. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151511864 

Alisawi O, Richert-Pöggeler KR, Heslop-Harrison JS, Schwarzacher T. 2023. The nature and organisation of tandemly repeated satellite DNAs in Petunia hybrida, related, and ancestral genomes. Frontiers in Plant Science 14-1232588. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2023.1232588.

Wang Z, Rouard M, Biswas MK, Droc G, Cui D, Roux N, Baurens FC, Ge XJ, Schwarzacher T, Heslop-Harrison JS, Liu Q 2022. A chromosome-level reference genome of Ensete glaucum gives insight into diversity, chromosomal and repetitive sequence evolution in the Musaceae. Gigascience March 2022. and bioRxiv. 2021 https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.11.23.4694741.

Ran Li, Mian Gong, Xinmiao Zhang, Fei Wang, Zhenyu Liu, Lei Zhang, Mengsi Xu, Yunfeng Zhang, Xuelei Dai, Zhuangbiao Zhang, Wenwen Fang, Yuta Yang, Huanhuan Zhang, Weiwei Fu, Chunna Cao, Peng Yang, Zeinab Amiri Ghanatsaman, Niloufar Jafarpour Negari, Hojjat Asadollahpour Nanaei, Xiangpeng Yue, Yuxuan Song, Xianyong Lan, Weidong Deng, Xihong Wang, Ruidong Xiang, Eveline M. Ibeagha-Awemu, Pat (J.S.) Heslop-Harrison, Johannes A. Lenstra, Shangquan Gan, Yu Jiang. 2021. The first sheep graph-based pan-genome reveals the spectrum of structural variations and their effects on tail phenotypes. bioRxiv 2021.12.22.472709; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.22.472709

Zhou S, Richert-Pöggeler KR, Wang Z, Schwarzacher T, Heslop-Harrison JS, Liu Q. 2022. High throughput RNA sequencing discovers symptomatic and latent viruses: an example from ornamental Hibiscus.  bioRxiv 2022.01.25.477650; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.25.477650

Liu Q, Yuan HY, Li MZ, Wang ZW, Cui DL, Ye Y, Sun Z, Tan X, Schwarzacher T, Heslop-Harrison JS. 2022. Chromosome-scale genome assembly of the diploid oat Avena longiglumis reveals the landscape of repetitive sequences, genes and chromosome evolution in grasses  bioRxiv 2022.02.09.479819; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.09.479819

Mustafa SI, Schwarzacher T, Heslop-Harrison JS. 2022. The nature and chromosomal landscape of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) integrated in the sheep nuclear genome. DNA (subject to revision) bioRxiv 2022.02.11.480048; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.11.480048

Tomaszewska P, Vorontsova MS, Renvoize SA, Ficinski SZ, Tohme J, Schwarzacher T, Castiblanco V, de Vega JJ, Mitchell RA, Heslop-Harrison P. 2022. Complex polyploid and hybrid species in an apomictic and sexual tropical forage grass group: genomic composition and evolution in Urochloa (Brachiaria). Annals of Botany, mcab147 . doi:10.1093/aob/mcab147

Higgins J, Tomaszewska P, Pellny TK, Castiblanco V, Arango J, Tohme J, Schwarzacher T, Mitchell RA, Heslop-Harrison JS, De Vega JJ. 2021. The five Urochloa spp. used in development of tropical forage cultivars originate from defined subpopulations with differentiated gene pools. BioRXiv 2021.07.21.453213. doi:10.1101/2021.07.21.453213

Hanley SJ, Pellny TK, de Vega JJ, Castiblanco V, Arango J, Eastmond PJ, Heslop-Harrison JSP, Mitchell RAC. 2021. Allele mining in diverse accessions of tropical grasses to improve forage quality and reduce environmental impact. Annals of Botany Sep 7;128(5):627-637. doi:10.1093/aob/mcab101

Richert-Pöggeler KR, Vijverberg K, Alisawi O, Chofong GN, Heslop-Harrison JSP, Schwarzacher T. 2021. Participation of multifunctional RNA in replication, recombination and regulation of Endogenous Plant PararetroViruses (EPRVs). Frontiers in Plant Science Jun 21;12:689307. doi:10.3389/fpls.2021.689307

Barile FA, Berry SC, Blaauboer B, Boobis A, Bolt HM, Borgert C, Dekant W, Dietrich D, Domingo JL, Galli CL, Gori GB, Hengstler JG, Heslop-Harrison P, Kacew S, Marquardt H, Mally A, Pelkonen O, Savolainen K, Testai E, Tsatsakis A, Vermeulen NP. 2021. The EU chemicals strategy for sustainability: in support of the BfR position. Archives of Toxicology Sep;95(9):3133-6. doi:10.1007/s00204-021-03125-w

Barile FA, Berry SC, Blaauboer B, Boobis A, Bolt HM, Borgert C, Dekant W, Dietrich D, Domingo JL, Galli CL, Gori GB, Hengstler JG, Kacew S, Marquardt H, Pelkonen O, Savolainen K, Heslop-Harrison JS, Tsatsakis A, Vermeulen NP. 2021. Critique of the "Comment" entitled "Pyrethroid exposure: Not so harmless after all" by Demeneix et al. (2020) published in the Lancet Diabetes Endocrinology. Toxicology Letters Apr 1;340:1-3. doi:10.1016/j.toxlet.2020.12.020