Gay geics | BBC Science Foc Magaze

Contents:

• WHAT DO THE NEW ‘GAY GEN’ TELL ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN?
• 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
• GAY GEICS
• BART HEYNEN’S NEW BOOK DADS SHOWS THE NUANC OF GAY FATHERHOOD
• THE GAY-O-METER! ?️‍? LGBTQ QUIZ
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• ‘GAY TT' FEAR MTN'T RAIL WORK ON SEXUALY'S GEIC BASIS
• AN OTTER WALKS INTO A GAY BAR…

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

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.

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.

There was another, much smaller, group who said they were entirely gay (about 6 percent), and a stterg of even smaller numbers who claimed to be bisexual. Firstly, they found very few gen whose variatns were rrelated wh beg gay, or even havg a sgle same-sex partner. I know the Virgil le season three gave the ht that he was and one of the wrers mented on the dick/Wally and Jaime/Bart pairgs sayg only one of those characters is gay their mds, and sce three out of four have girliends procs of elimatn dictat ’s Bart.

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

We have known for s that sexual orientatn is partly herable men, thanks to studi of fai which some people are straight and some people are gay. 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. Alan Sanrs at North Shore Universy, Illois, and his team ppoted the gen by parg DNA om 1077 gay and 1231 straight men.

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

Intertgly, this bra regn ntas the hypothalam, which was intified 1991 as differg size between gay and straight men. 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.

There have been studi suggtg that there is a geic element to homosexualy women, but more rearch has been done men, says Sanrs. 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. “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 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.

GAY GEICS

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.

BART HEYNEN’S NEW BOOK DADS SHOWS THE NUANC OF GAY FATHERHOOD

“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. “We worried a lot about volunteer bias, ” said Bailey, whose rearch clus a wily publicized study on Xq28 and gay brothers om 2018.

THE GAY-O-METER! ?️‍? LGBTQ QUIZ

Sanrs llaborated wh Bailey on those earlier studi and said their work had always admted that there was no sgle “gay gene.

'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .

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. Your gen terme your sexual orientatn, study suggtsA NEW study parg the DNA of homosexual and heterosexual men uld prove that sexual orientatn is rooted a person’s HAS long been bated whether sexual orientatn is a rult of a person’s blogy or is termed by environmental factors and outsi fluenc.

Rearch unrtaken by North Shore Universy Illois claims to have disvered geic markers that dite whether or not a person is gay.

Scientists pared the whole genom of around 1000 homosexual men and 1200 heterosexual men and found there were two specific DNA regns that differed between the of the regns alt wh a gene that plays an important role bra velopment and hormone productn, which uld also be lked to a person’s sexual other gene is lked to thyroid functn, which is an area prevly been lked wh sexual orientatn, acrdg to the thors of the some geic differenc were found the areas, the rearchers have utned that the rults are “bt scribed as speculative”, but still leave rearchers a step closer to unrstandg how sexual preferenc velop. “As this study was rried out European men, we do not know whether the fdgs will apply to homosexualy women, or even to homosexualy non-European men. “All that is required to see a geic associatn this study is for slightly more homosexual men to rry the geic variant than heterosexual men, and many tim this will simply be due to chance.

‘GAY TT' FEAR MTN'T RAIL WORK ON SEXUALY'S GEIC BASIS

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. 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.

AN OTTER WALKS INTO A GAY BAR…

It’s held aloft by Dr Alan Sanrs and a group of lleagu om NorthShore Universy near Chigo who are attendg a gay pri ftival.

Sanrs is now analysg that data and the rults uld tell once and for all whether there’s such a thg as a ‘gay gene’. “The people participatg our study are terted ntributg to this kd of scientific knowledge and want to unrstand at least part of how they me to be the way they are, ” Sanrs search for ‘gay gen’ go back to 1993, when a US team led by Dr Dean Hamer scribed a regn of DNA loted on the X chromosome lled Xq28. The regn also go by another name: GAY-1, a geic marker lked to male disvery ed Hamer to be attacked om all sis.

“Conservative, right-wg people hated bee they felt that was sayg that beg gay is like beg black, that was -born, that would somehow ‘exce’ gay people or give them more rights, ” says Hamer. “On the other hand, gay people hated too bee, at that time, there were fears that the disvery would be mised to abort gay babi and wipe gay people off the face of the Earth.