About

Michael B. Eisen is a Professor of Genetics, Genomics, Evolution, and Development at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research focuses on genetics, genomics, evolution, and development, contributing to the understanding of these fields through his work at Berkeley. He is associated with the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and is involved in various academic and research activities related to molecular biology and genetics.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Economics
• Medicine
• Biology
• Virology
• Environmental protection
• Pathology
• Business
• Computational biology
• Natural resource economics
• Agronomy
• Law and economics
• Environmental science
• Ecology

Selected publications

• Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century

  PLOS Climate · 2022 · 151 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Environmental science
  • Environmental protection
  • Natural resource economics

  Animal agriculture contributes significantly to global warming through ongoing emissions of the potent greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, and displacement of biomass carbon on the land used to support livestock. However, because estimates of the magnitude of the effect of ending animal agriculture often focus on only one factor, the full potential benefit of a more radical change remains underappreciated. Here we quantify the full “climate opportunity cost” of current global livestock production, by modeling the combined, long-term effects of emission reductions and biomass recovery that would be unlocked by a phaseout of animal agriculture. We show that, even in the absence of any other emission reductions, persistent drops in atmospheric methane and nitrous oxide levels, and slower carbon dioxide accumulation, following a phaseout of livestock production would, through the end of the century, have the same cumulative effect on the warming potential of the atmosphere as a 25 gigaton per year reduction in anthropogenic CO 2 emissions, providing half of the net emission reductions necessary to limit warming to 2°C. The magnitude and rapidity of these potential effects should place the reduction or elimination of animal agriculture at the forefront of strategies for averting disastrous climate change.

  DOI

• Publishing in the time of COVID-19

  eLife · 2020 · 75 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Virology
  • Biology

  eLife is making changes to its policies on peer review in response to the impact of COVID-19 on the scientific community.

  DOI

• Pledging intellectual property for COVID-19

  Nature Biotechnology · 2020 · 74 citations

  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Law and economics

  Voluntary pledges to make intellectual property broadly available to address urgent public health crises can overcome administrative and legal hurdles faced by more elaborate legal arrangements such as patent pools and achieve greater acceptance than governmental compulsory licensing.

  DOI

Recent grants

• Berkeley Training Program in Genomics and Computational Biology

  NIH · $12.6M · 2000–2030

• NIH Grant R01HG002779

  NIH · $5.3M · 2013

• NIH Grant R21HG006583

  NIH · $406k · 2015

Frequent coauthors

• Patrick O. Brown

  Stanford University

  194 shared

• David Botstein

  141 shared

• Louis M. Staudt

  90 shared

• Ash A. Alizadeh

  Stanford University

  82 shared

• Ronald Levy

  Stanford University

  78 shared

• Wing C. Chan

  City Of Hope National Medical Center

  77 shared

• Izidore S. Lossos

  University of Miami

  76 shared

• Xiaoyong Li

  Ningbo Center for Disease Control and Prevention

  62 shared

Education

• B.S., Molecular and Cell Biology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1990

• Ph.D., Molecular and Cell Biology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1996

Similar researchers at University of California, Berkeley

• Peidong Yangh-262
• Jennifer A. Doudnah-230
• Jeffrey R. Longh-189
• John F. Hartwigh-180
• Rasmus Nielsenh-180