Large study quash ia of “gay gene”

Contents:

• NO ‘GAY GENE’: MASSIVE STUDY HOM ON GEIC BASIS OF HUMAN SEXUALY
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• WHAT DO THE NEW ‘GAY GEN’ TELL ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN?
• NEWS: THERE’S NO ONE ‘GAY GENE,’ BUT... (THE WASHGTON POST) - BEHD THE HEADL
• NEWS: 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT... (THE GUARDIAN) - BEHD THE HEADL
• DO A ‘GAY GENE’ EXIST? NEW STUDY SAYS ‘XQ28’ MAY INFLUENCE MALE SEXUAL ORIENTATN
• LARGE STUDY QUASH IA OF “GAY GENE”
• GAY GENE STUDY, JOURNALISM NTROVERSI, AND CLASSIL GEICS
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE,’ COMPREHENSIVE SCIENTIFIC STUDY FDS
• NO 'GAY GENE', BUT STUDY FDS GEIC LKS TO SEXUAL BEHAVR
• ‘THERE IS NO GAY GENE’: BUT STUDY SUGGTS GEICS MAY PLAY ROLE CHOOSG SAME SEX PARTNER
• SCIENCENO SGLE 'GAY GENE', REVEALS THE LARGT-EVER STUDY OF THE GEICS OF SAME-SEX SEXUAL BEHAVUR
• THE 'GAY GENE' IS A MYTH BUT BEG GAY IS 'NATURAL,' SAY SCIENTISTS
• LARGT STUDY OF GAY BROTHERS HOM ON 'GAY GEN'

NO ‘GAY GENE’: MASSIVE STUDY HOM ON GEIC BASIS OF HUMAN SEXUALY

“There is no ‘gay gene’, ” says lead study thor Andrea Ganna, a geicist at the Broad Instute of MIT and Harvard Cambridge, and his lleagu also ed the analysis to timate that up to 25% of sexual behavur n be explaed by geics, wh the rt fluenced by environmental and cultural factors — a figure siar to the fdgs of smaller studi. Humans have tried to unrstand human sexualy for centuri — and geics rearchers joed the ay the early 1990s after a seri of studi on tws suggted homosexualy ran fai. “As a teenager tryg to unrstand myself and unrstand my sexualy, I looked at the ter for “the gay gene” and obvly me across Xq28, ” said Fah Sathirapongsasuti, a study -thor and senr scientist at 23andMe, which he joked once led him to believe he hered his gayns om his mother.

THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS

The rearchers had members of the same-sex muny review the study’s sign and language, and they adm that their termology and fns for gay, lbian and heterosexual do not reflect the full nature of the sexualy ntuum. “[Our study] unrsr an important role for the environment shapg human sexual behavr and perhaps most importantly there is no sgle gay gene but rather the ntributn of many small geic effects sttered across the genome, ” Neale said. Specifilly, the fact that geics n expla up to 32 percent of the fact that someone is gay or lbian, do not mean that sexual inty is termed primarily by environmental factors – not to mentn social on.

“Bee we had this uniquely large study, ” he ntued, “which allowed to have robt nclns, and bee we had the technology to measure the geic markers of so many dividuals, the time was right to nfirm somethg that we expected: There is no one specific gay gene.

WHAT DO THE NEW ‘GAY GEN’ TELL ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN?

”At the same time, adds Ganna, a geicist at Harvard Medil School and at Fland’s Instute of Molecular Medice, “Not everyone is terpretg the fact that there’s no sgle ‘gay gene’ the right way. ” which wonred, skeptilly: If the study prov that homosexualy is related to the environment, above all, and not to heredy – why isn’t right and proper, scientific terms, to allow those who so sire to unrgo treatment orr to rce their same-sex sir, which have now been shown not to be geic? An article published two years ago (about a study which all the subjects had taken part a gay pri para Toronto) found a nnectn between that hand and the gay person’s “role bed”: that is, the proportn of left-hand gays who fed their sexual behavr as passive or versatile (i.

NEWS: THERE’S NO ONE ‘GAY GENE,’ BUT... (THE WASHGTON POST) - BEHD THE HEADL

A gay pri para Toronto, Geoff Robs / AFPIn rearch nducted over the years on the subject of the nnectn between sexual orientatn and other attribut of the body, the hand holds a place of honor.

However, no such differenc were found between gay and straight year a team of scientists led by a Brish psychologist measured the fgers of 18 pairs of intil female tws, one lbian, the other straight. And, they add to bolster their argument, fdgs of studi volvg those fgers have not been replited scientific field of “gay science” has been on a roll recent years, but has a far longer history.

A leadg scientist this field is Brish-Amerin nroblogist Simon LeVay, who 1990 performed topsi on the bodi of 41 people: 19 gay men, 16 straight men and ne women.

NEWS: 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT... (THE GUARDIAN) - BEHD THE HEADL

“In 1991, ” LeVay told Haaretz a phone nversatn, “I published a study that got a lot of media attentn, related to my observatn that there was a regn si the hypothalam that was different size between men and women, and also between gay and straight men… My addnal fdg was the difference size between gay and straight men this regn si the hypothalam that is volved the regulatn of sexual behavr.

DO A ‘GAY GENE’ EXIST? NEW STUDY SAYS ‘XQ28’ MAY INFLUENCE MALE SEXUAL ORIENTATN

“And that is characteristic geics of somethg on the X chromosome – bee mal get their X chromosom om their moms… That led to look fai where there were gay brothers, to see if they shared anythg on the X chromosome.

For example, we’ll fd a gene that is rponsible for the productn of ttosterone, and if s functng was low, would be possible to say that this is the e of homosexualy a particular person…. ”As Hamer se , “If you look for those five markers, or even jt the three strongt markers, they are not necsarily found people who actually intify as gay or lbian.

LARGE STUDY QUASH IA OF “GAY GENE”

Ksey had nducted a survey of men, which found that 37 percent of his subjects said they had unrgone a homosexual experience of some kd, and 10 percent said they had been exclively gay for three years of their adult life – a statistic which to this day is generally said to reprent the proportn of people engagg same-sex behavr. ' At the same time, subsequent studi reveal that the percentage of people who fe themselv as “exclively” homosexual is far lower, though fluctuat om one article to the next.

”One of the lsons, and one of the most tertg pots arisg om the study has to do, says Ganna, wh the mo of measurement that had been e sce 1948, when Ksey’s sle ranked dividuals as beg between 0 (totally heterosexual) and 6 (totally homosexual) “Basilly, the tenncy is to lote dividuals on a ntuum. You n supposedly be anywhere between 100 percent heterosexual to 100 percent homosexual, which impli that the more you’re homosexual, the ls you’re heterosexual, and vice versa. What we’re now dog is, rather than askg people to put themselv on a sle somewhere between beg exclively heterosexual or exclively homosexual, we ask them how much they’re attracted to men and women.

I don’t thk ’s val for gay liberatn to prove that ‘gay people n’t help but be gay’ – there are plenty of other reasons [for acceptg them], cludg basic human rights. ”In recent years, “there have been many studi showg that people’s attus toward homosexualy are closely tied to their beliefs about what mak people gay, ” says LeVay, cg a survey that showed there was a high probabily that people who thk homosexualy is a choice will object to a gay person beg their children’s teacher – which a way might make sense, he adds: “If you thk beg gay is somethg fect, socially ntag, and you didn’t want your kid to be gay, then you wouldn’t want their teacher to be gay...

GAY GENE STUDY, JOURNALISM NTROVERSI, AND CLASSIL GEICS

One of the parameters nsirs are geic rrelatns between gen that are ascribed to homosexualy, and certa psychologil, the psychologist: “One thg that was perceived as ntroversial, was to look for – and fd – a geic overlap between homosexual sex gen and gen associated wh prsn. There are assumptns that the higher rat of prsn among gay men and lbians is due to the way they are mistreated by society, but the evince for that is not so overwhelmg. There is also the fact, for example, that you have as high a rate of prsn among homosexual men the Netherlands, which is very tolerant, as you have some ls tolerant plac, like the Uned Stat.

THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE,’ COMPREHENSIVE SCIENTIFIC STUDY FDS

In 2017, for example, two rearchers om Stanford published an article statg that “gay men are predicted to have smaller jaws and chs, slimmer eyebrows, longer nos, and larger foreheads; the oppose should be te for lbians. The program was able to distguish between gays and lbians and heterosexuals wh an accuracy of 81 percent for men and 71 percent for women, ntrast to an average rate of succsful human gus of 61 percent and 54 percent, rpectively.

Even though the program achieved relatively imprsive rults, the study as such drew wispread cricism – not unual for rearchers engaged such Stanford “gays intifitn” program may be an extreme example, this rpect, but ’s also a byproduct of the nsirable surge studi this field, a trend that began the early 1990s. The first one, nducted 1977, found that only 13 percent of the rponnts believed that homosexualy is an nate tenncy, while 56 percent attributed to environmental factors.

The latt survey, om the end of last year, showed this trend ntug: More than half of the Amerin public believ that gay people are born wh their sexual orientatn, whereas only 30 percent attribute to environmental factors (10 percent said both factors play a part, 4 percent ced other factors and 6 percent said they weren’t sure). The latt Gallup poll shows that an absolutely majory (88 percent) of those who believe that homosexualy is an nate tra also support legimizg same-sex marriag. “Public opn polls asked people whether they thk [gays] were born this way or not, and we know that believg that homosexualy is nate rrelat wh havg posive feelgs toward gay rights.

NO 'GAY GENE', BUT STUDY FDS GEIC LKS TO SEXUAL BEHAVR

It is important to note that the same-sex soc-sexual behavr observed the study is distct om homosexual behavr bee s motivatn and purpose are social, said Jean-Baptiste Le, who studi primate behavr at the Universy of Lethbridge Canada and was not volved the new rearch. In 1993, geic variatns a regn on the X chromosome men were lked to whether they were heterosexual or homosexual, and 1995, a regn on chromosome 8 was intified. Grave’s disease is more mon gay than straight men, and some rearch suggts that gay men tend to be thner – which might possibly be a rult of thyroid overdrive.

The latt fdgs open the prospect to intifyg the whole pathway of gen volved both homosexual and heterosexual orientatn, says Dean Hamer at the US Natnal Instut of Health, who led the study that ppoted chromosome X back 1993. IntroductnWhile the ual batn of sex chromosom (XX or XY) predicts sexual orientatn and behavr for the vast majory of humans (as heterosexual), variatn exists: a stable mory of men (3~4%) are homosexual1 and male sexual orientatn appears to be bimodally distributed wh most men ratg themselv as predomantly heterosexual (Ksey sle 0–1) or homosexual (Ksey sle 5–6)1, 2, 3, 4, 5. To extend our gene mappg efforts for the tra, we report here the rults om analyzg 1, 109 homosexual and 1, 231 heterosexual primarily European anctry men the first published GWAS on the tra.

‘THERE IS NO GAY GENE’: BUT STUDY SUGGTS GEICS MAY PLAY ROLE CHOOSG SAME SEX PARTNER

Plot of negative log10 of the p-valu for the sgle SNP associatn analysis of 1, 077 homosexual and 1, 231 heterosexual men, orred along the x-axis for each chromosome by chromosomal size image. Members of the SLITRK prote fay are bra-exprsed nronal transmembrane protes that regulate nronal outgrowth, survival, and synapse formatn; SLITRKs have signifint homology to the secreted axonal growth-ntrollg SLIT fay of protes and also homology to the nrotrophic tyrose kase receptor (NTRK) fay32, 33, 34. The thors49 speculate on the possibily that a geic (or other prenatal) factor might tie together this creased risk for a type of hyperthyroidism (Grav’ disease) wh separate observatns of lower body weight for homosexual vers heterosexual men (pennt of diet or exercise)50, 51, 52.

SCIENCENO SGLE 'GAY GENE', REVEALS THE LARGT-EVER STUDY OF THE GEICS OF SAME-SEX SEXUAL BEHAVUR

Femal wh Grav’ disease have been reported to manift biased X chromosome activatn53, 54, 55, and skewed X chromosome activatn has also been reported mothers of homosexual men pared to age-matched mothers of heterosexual men56. Detectable geic variants predisposg to homosexualy would have alternative allel, which would necsarily predispose to heterosexualy, th ntributg to unrstandg of both typil heterosexual and mory homosexual orientatns.

THE 'GAY GENE' IS A MYTH BUT BEG GAY IS 'NATURAL,' SAY SCIENTISTS

In our GWLS on 409 pairs of homosexual brothers 384 multiplex fai23, we classified men as homosexual based on both their self-reported sexual inty and sexual feelgs (Ksey 5–6). For this GWAS, after removg 12 fai (two homosexual brothers each) for beg anctry outliers via prcipal ponents analysis (PCA), we clud all remag homosexual mal (N = 769) and all heterosexual mal (N = 33) om the GWLS dataset (372 fai, each wh two or more homosexual brothers, Supplementary Table S2). 0 platform) addnal mal (same phenotypic fns), wh the followg subjects beg retaed after qualy ntrol (QC, below): 221 homosexual mal and 13 heterosexual mal (om 227 partially pleted lkage fai, i.

We also rporated our Molecular Geics of Schizophrenia (MGS) llaboratn ntrols dataset (the male, European anctry portn retaed after QC: 36 homosexual and 1, 185 heterosexual) that was genotyped wh Affymetrix 6. Male sexual orientatn may be fluenced by geics, a new study fdgs, shared at the annual meetg of the Amerin Associatn for the Advancement of Science Chigo, revealed that a study that tted the DNA of 409 gay men, at least two chromosom may affect a man’s sexual orientatn.

Our fdgs suggt there may be gen at play, and we found evince for two sets that affect whether a man is gay or straight, " said Michael Bailey of Northwtern Universy, who rried out the study volved drawg blood om 409 gay brothers and heterosexual members of their fai. In a follow-up work, he found 33 out of 40 gay brothers had siar geic markers on the Xq28 regn of the X chromosome, the Guardian the time, Hamer’s study nclud that there is “99.

LARGT STUDY OF GAY BROTHERS HOM ON 'GAY GEN'

"It is not pletely termative; there are certaly other environmental factors volved, " Bailey study rais the possibily of prenatal ttg to terme whether the child will be gay or straight. The rults suggt we shouldn’t be measurg sexual preference on a sgle ntuum om straight to gay, but rather two separate dimensns: attractn to the same sex and attractn to the oppose sex. Last Augt (2019), a large study published one of the world’s largt scientific journals, Science, statg that there is not only one gene associated wh homosexual behavr, but a llectn of several gen.

The study, the largt ever, is excellent and the rults (also the methods) certaly make place for nsirable discsn, however, what h me most was the fact that, spe beg about the same study, the news tl and nclns surround through different opns: for some, geics has no fluence on homosexual behavr, and for others, do.