Jared Talbot
COBRE Project: Motility and guidance signals control migration of muscle precursors
Goal: Identify new cues that promote and guide the migration of hypaxial muscle precursor cells. Outcome: Close important gaps in understanding a vital process in developmental biology; the findings are expected to influence our understanding of tumor growth and metastasis as well as muscle regeneration.
Project leader qualifications: Dr. Talbot‘s PhD training was in the lab of Dr. Charles Kimmel, one of the founders of zebrafish genetics. During his postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Sharon Amacher, Dr. Talbot pioneered zebrafish mutagenesis technologies, generated illuminating new transgenic tools, and produced a stem-to-stern overhaul of how muscle precursor migration is understood in this model organism. Dr. Talbot became an Assistant Professor at UMaine in the fall of 2019.
Career impact of COBRE support: Funding for the proposed research, along with mentorship and other forms of support will greatly impact Dr. Talbot’s career development by providing his first major external grant, enabling pursuit of high yield strategies, and providing an extensive collaborative network. This COBRE will also provide support and mentorship from Drs. Baylies and Henry during grant writing and provide microscopy resources that will substantially expand his research capacity.
Unique contributions: Dr. Talbot brings extensive experience in vertebrate mutagenesis that is already being used by Dr. Henry’s lab to improve their genome editing. He also brings a unique pharmaco-genetic approach that will generate both basic science insights and potentially translatable products. His experience with cell-cell signaling during vertebrate development offers new perspectives to other colleagues in the center.
Utilization of COBRE and institutional resources: Dr. Talbot’s work will make extensive use of the proposed microscopy core for longitudinal live imaging studies
