Jared Talbot

Education

  • Cornell University, 2004, B.S.
  • University of Oregon, 2011, Ph.D.
  • UC Berkeley, 2011-2012, Postdoc
  • Ohio State University, 2012-2019, Postdoc

Brief Biography

The Talbot lab investigates fundamental questions about muscle development. How do muscle stem cells find their way to the right places to make a healthy embryo? Once they arrive, how do they build the structures that let them contract? The Talbot lab investigates these questions by watching every step of muscle formation in healthy living animals, and through investigation of newly developed disease models. We use zebrafish as a model organism, because they lay numerous eggs in a morning and can be seen clearly through the whole process of muscle development. Through knockout and transgenic analysis, we showed that the Mylpf genes are essential for building contractile structures (sarcomeres) and showed further that changes in Mylpf activity leads to human disease. Through molecular screening, we have identified pathways that control the muscle-forming cell migrations. We are currently recruiting students to work on both projects.

Dr. Talbot received his Bachelors in Science in Biology from Cornell University. He then began his work on developmental biology by studying skeleton formation with Dr. Charles Kimmel at the University of Oregon. After this, he did a postdoc investigating muscle development with Sharon Amacher, initially working at the University of California Berkeley, then continuing the same work at The Ohio State University. Since coming to the University of Maine in Orono, he has built a productive lab, received the Graduate Student Government’s Graduate Faculty Mentor Award, and the Chi-Bin Chien Award for new zebrafish investigators. He received tenure in 2025, is an investigator on UMaine’s first COBRE grant, and has secured R15 funding for the lab.

The following publications provide a sense of the lab’s work.

Research Interests

  • Development
  • Molecular and Cellular Biology
  • Stem Cells

Selected Publications

  • Adekeye TE, Hupper TE, Easterbrooks TE, Teets EM, Tomak EA, Waterman SL, Sprague KA, White A, Coffin ML, Tanaka DK, Varga SM, Soares MT, Shepherd SJ, Austin JD, Krivorotko D, Perry ES, Amacher SL, Kelley JB, and Talbot JC.. Myosin light chain proteins cooperatively promote sarcomere growth in fast-twitch muscle. BioRXIV, 2025.
  • DeLaurier AD*~, Howe DG, Ruzicka L, Carte AN, Hernandez LM, Wiggins KJ, Gallati MM, VanPelt K, Loyo Rosado F, Pugh KG, Shabdue CJ, Jihad K, Thyme SB, and Talbot JC*~. ZebraShare: A new venue for rapid dissemination of zebrafish mutant data. PeerJ, 2021 9:e11007.
  • Chong J.X.*, Talbot J.C.* et al., Mutations in MYLPF Cause a Novel Segmental Amyoplasia that Manifests as Distal Arthrogryposis. American Journal of Human Genetics, 2020, 197(2) 293-310.
  • Hromowyk K.J.*, Talbot J.C.*, Martin B.L, Janssen P.M.L., and Amacher S.L. Muscle fusion mechanisms in slow and fast muscle fibers differ between embryonic and juvenile zebrafish. Developmental Biology, 2020, 462(1), 85-100
  • Talbot J.C., Teets E.M., Ratnayake D., Phan D.Q., Currie P.D., and Amacher S.L. Muscle precursor cell movements in zebrafish are dynamic and require Six family genes. Development, 2019, 146(10)

Complete List of Published Work in My Bibliography: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/jared.talbot.1/bibliography/public/

Laboratory Website

Link to Laboratory Website: https://talbotlab.org