Thomas J. Silhavy

Who is Thomas J. Silhavy?

Thomas J. Silhavy is the Warner-Lambert Parke-Davis Professor of molecular biology at Princeton University. Silhavy is a bacterial geneticist who has made fundamental contributions to several different research fields. He is best known for his work on protein secretion, membrane biogenesis, and signal transduction. Using Escherichia coli as a model system, his lab was the first to isolate signal sequence mutations, identify a component of cellular protein secretion machinery, discover an integral membrane component of the outer membrane assembly machinery, and to identify and characterize a two-component regulatory system. Current work in his lab is focused on the mechanisms of outer membrane biogenesis and the regulatory systems that sense and respond to envelope stress and trigger the developmental pathway that allows cells to survive starvation. He is the author of more than 200 research articles and three books.

Silhavy was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.