Jonathan (Joff) Silberg

About

Jonathan (Joff) Silberg is the Stewart Memorial Professor of Biochemistry with appointments in the Departments of BioSciences, Bioengineering, and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University. He is also a Faculty Scholar at the Baker Institute, Center of Health & Biosciences. Silberg earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Biology and Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine between 1992 and 1994. He continued his education at UC Irvine, completing a PhD in Biology with a focus on Physiology and Biophysics from 1995 to 2000. Following his doctoral studies, he conducted postdoctoral research in Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology from 2001 to 2004. His research group, the Silberg Lab, focuses on synthetic biology at the cell/material interface, integrating principles from biochemistry, bioengineering, and chemical engineering to advance understanding and applications in this interdisciplinary field.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Nanotechnology
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Environmental chemistry
• Materials science
• Ecology
• Biochemical engineering
• Computational biology
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Real-time bioelectronic sensing of environmental contaminants

  Nature · 2022 · 221 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Translating New Synthetic Biology Advances for Biosensing Into the Earth and Environmental Sciences

  Frontiers in Microbiology · 2021 · 105 citations

  The rapid diversification of synthetic biology tools holds promise in making some classically hard-to-solve environmental problems tractable. Here we review longstanding problems in the Earth and environmental sciences that could be addressed using engineered microbes as micron-scale sensors (biosensors). Biosensors can offer new perspectives on open questions, including understanding microbial behaviors in heterogeneous matrices like soils, sediments, and wastewater systems, tracking cryptic el…

  DOI

• Soil organic matter attenuates the efficacy of flavonoid-based plant-microbe communication

  Science Advances · 2020 · 97 citations

  Plant-microbe interactions are mediated by signaling compounds that control vital plant functions, such as nodulation, defense, and allelopathy. While interruption of signaling is typically attributed to biological processes, potential abiotic controls remain less studied. Here, we show that higher organic carbon (OC) contents in soils repress flavonoid signals by up to 70%. Furthermore, the magnitude of repression is differentially dependent on the chemical structure of the signaling molecule,…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Solution‐Deposited and Patternable Conductive Polymer Thin‐Film Electrodes for Microbial Bioelectronics

  Advanced Materials · 2022 · 60 citations

  Microbial bioelectronic devices integrate naturally occurring or synthetically engineered electroactive microbes with microelectronics. These devices have a broad range of potential applications, but engineering the biotic-abiotic interface for biocompatibility, adhesion, electron transfer, and maximum surface area remains a challenge. Prior approaches to interface modification lack simple processability, the ability to pattern the materials, and/or a significant enhancement in currents. Here, a…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Information storage across a microbial community using universal RNA barcoding

  Nature Biotechnology · 2025-03-18 · 23 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant F32GM064949

  NIH · $112k · 2004

• CAREER: Using Laboratory Evolution to Study Protein Dynamics In Vivo

  NSF · $787k · 2012–2018

• NRT: A Bioelectronics Incubator for Training Students (BITS) at the Cell/Material Interface

  NSF · $3.0M · 2018–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Joshua T. Atkinson

  University of Southern California

  31 shared

• Caroline A. Masiello

  26 shared

• George N. Bennett

  15 shared

• Ian Campbell

  University of Washington

  15 shared

• Frances H. Arnold

  15 shared

• Kevin G. Hoff

  Triple Ring Technologies (United States)

  14 shared

• Shirley Liu

  Western University

  11 shared

• Peter Q. Nguyen

  10 shared

Labs

• Silberg LabPI

Similar researchers at Rice University

• Erez Lieberman Aidenh-91
• Bonnie Bartelh-76
• Daniel Carsonh-56