Two gene variants have been found to be more mon gay men. New Scientist looks at what this tells about the way blogy shap our sexualy
Contents:
- THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
- NO ‘GAY GENE’: MASSIVE STUDY HOM ON GEIC BASIS OF HUMAN SEXUALY
- NO SGLE ‘GAY GENE’ TERM SAME-SEX SEXUAL BEHAVR, DNA ANALYSIS FDS
- THE LIFE OF THE GAY GENE: OM HYPOTHETIL GEIC MARKER TO SOCIAL REALY
- WHAT DO THE NEW ‘GAY GEN’ TELL ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN?
- THERE’S NO ONE ‘GAY GENE,’ BUT GEICS ARE LKED TO SAME-SEX BEHAVR, NEW STUDY SAYS
- SCIENTISTS FD DNA DIFFERENC BETWEEN GAY MEN AND THEIR STRAIGHT TW BROTHERS
- GAY GEICSMOST OF BELIEVE THAT WE WERE BORN THAT WAY, BUT IS SEXUAL ORIENTATN OUR DNA? JV CHAMARY GO SEARCH OF THE GAY GENEJV CHAMARYPUBLISHED: MAY 31, 2009 AT 11:00 PMGAY GEICS
THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
There is no sgle “gay gene,” a new study found. Instead, sexual orientatn is like most other human tras, fluenced by a plex mix of geics and environment. * dna gay gene *
“There is no gay gene, ” Ganna said, “but rather non-heterosexualy is fluenced by many ty-effect geic factors. Some people who have had sex wh a same-sex partner don’t nsir themselv gay and aren’t exclively attracted to people of the same sex, Bailey says. Men the new study who said they have had same-sex partners, tend to be more exclively homosexual than women were, Ganna and lleagu found.
Bbank dataset, for example, younger people reported havg same-sex partners more often than olr people did, probably bee homosexual activy was illegal the Uned Kgdom until 1967. In the new study, the more exclively homosexual partners men had, the fewer children they had; up to 80 percent fewer children than heterosexual men. Diamond disagre that rearchers need to fd a mechanism to expla the persistence of geic variants lked to homosexualy.
The study of nearly a half ln people clos the door on the bate around the existence of a so-lled “gay gene. It is worth keepg md that this study only vers some typ of sexualy — gay, lbian and cis-straight — but don’t offer many sights to genr inty.
NO ‘GAY GENE’: MASSIVE STUDY HOM ON GEIC BASIS OF HUMAN SEXUALY
The gay gene was first intified 1993 as a rrelatn between the geic marker Xq28 and gay male sexualy. The rults of this origal study were never replited, and the blogil realy of such an enty remas hypothetil. However, spe such tenuo provenance, the gay gene has p … * dna gay gene *
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.
NO SGLE ‘GAY GENE’ TERM SAME-SEX SEXUAL BEHAVR, DNA ANALYSIS FDS
“We worried a lot about volunteer bias, ” said Bailey, whose rearch clus a wily publicized study on Xq28 and gay brothers om 2018. Sanrs llaborated wh Bailey on those earlier studi and said their work had always admted that there was no sgle “gay gene.
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. “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.
THE LIFE OF THE GAY GENE: OM HYPOTHETIL GEIC MARKER TO SOCIAL REALY
In theory, humans and other animals who are exclively attracted to others of the same sex should be unlikely to produce many blogil children, so any gen that predispose people to homosexualy would rarely be passed on to future generatns. Yet same-sex attractn is wispread humans, and rearch suggts that is partly a study of data om hundreds of thoands of people, rearchers have now intified geic patterns that uld be associated wh homosexual behavur, and showed how the might also help people to fd different-sex mat, and reproduce.
The thors say their fdgs, published on 23 Augt Nature Human Behavur1, uld help to expla why gen that predispose people to homosexualy ntue to be passed down. None of the variatns seemed to greatly affect sexual behavur on s own, backg up prev rearch that has found no sign of a ‘gay gene’.
Most of the participants were born durg a time when homosexualy was eher illegal or culturally taboo their untri, so many people who were attracted to others of the same sex might never have actually acted on their attractn, and uld therefore have end up the wrong group the Monk, an elogist and evolutnary blogist at Yale Universy New Haven, Connecticut, thks that the veats are so important that the paper n’t draw any real nclns about geics and sexual orientatn. Instead, he thks the rearchers have found geic markers associated wh openns to new experienc, which uld expla the overlap between people who have had a homosexual partner and heterosexual people who have had many partners.
WHAT DO THE NEW ‘GAY GEN’ TELL ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN?
And he adms that g a sgle homosexual experience as an ditn of sexual orientatn isn’t ial, but says that the UK Bbank didn’t provi data on attractn.
However, blogists have documented homosexual behavr more than 450 speci, argug that same-sex behavr is not an unnatural choice, and may fact play a val role wh populatns. The 2019 study is the latt a hunt for “gay gen” that began 1993, when Dean Hamer lked male homosexualy to a sectn of the X chromosome. As the ease and affordabily of genome sequencg creased, addnal gene ndidat have emerged wh potential lks to homosexual behavr.
THERE’S NO ONE ‘GAY GENE,’ BUT GEICS ARE LKED TO SAME-SEX BEHAVR, NEW STUDY SAYS
So-lled genome-wi associatn studi intified a gene lled SLITRK6, which is active a bra regn lled the diencephalon that differs size between people who are homosexual or heterosexual. Wh multiple gene ndidat beg lked to homosexualy, seemed highly unlikely that a sgle “gay” gene exists. Gay uncl and nts, for example, are “helpers the nt” that help raise other fay members’ children to nurture the fay tree.
” For example, certa gen women help crease their fertily, but if the gen are exprsed a male, they predispose him toward homosexualy. While there is no sgle “gay gene, ” there is overwhelmg evince of a blogil basis for sexual orientatn that is programmed to the bra before birth based on a mix of geics and prenatal ndns, none of which the fet choos. A new study that analyzed the DNA of nearly half a ln people has found that, while geic differenc play a signifint role sexual behavr, there is no sgle gene fdgs, which looked at behavr and not sexual inty, bunk the notn of a sgular “gay gene.
SCIENTISTS FD DNA DIFFERENC BETWEEN GAY MEN AND THEIR STRAIGHT TW BROTHERS
“This new study provis even more evince that that beg gay or lbian is a natural part of human life, a ncln that has been drawn by rearchers and scientists time and aga, ” GLAAD Chief Programs Officer Zeke Stok said a statement. The work “also renfirms the long-tablished unrstandg that there is no nclive gree to which nature or nurture fluence how a gay or lbian person behav. Those who nsir beg gay a disadvantage life (which still is, certa societi), might regard gay people differently if they knew that beg gay was an hered tra, rather than a nsequence of life events, such as a particular type of upbrgg, or mixg wh certa sorts of iends or even a liberate cisn.
GAY GEICSMOST OF BELIEVE THAT WE WERE BORN THAT WAY, BUT IS SEXUAL ORIENTATN OUR DNA? JV CHAMARY GO SEARCH OF THE GAY GENEJV CHAMARYPUBLISHED: MAY 31, 2009 AT 11:00 PMGAY GEICS
The law also might take a different view those untri (aga, there are still many) which beg gay is a crimal offense. An early study claimed that if one pair of (male) intil tws (who have intil geic patterns) was gay, there was a 100 percent chance of the other one also beg gay. It was quickly shown that, fact, the real chance of two intil tws beg gay was around 40-50 percent, whereas was ls non-intil on, though still somewhat greater than the general populatn.