dmaiski

well you could say it was pointed out by Mendel first in the 1850's and 60's where he postulated that there was some form of transferable element(he didn’t call it DNA or even know it was a molecule) 1903- chromosomes theorized 1933-DNA identified 1953 Watson and Crick 2003-human genome project we by now know all there is to know about genetics or at least most of it we haven’t analysed or understood even 1% of all that we know so there plenty to learn from the analytic side, but not much left on the real physical discoveries (ive omitted RNA, non biological DNA applications, and various other titbits that could be relevant)

I'm bi actually... (technically i just like whoever i like or find attractive regardless of gender or silly things like that, there's a word for it but i forgot it) its one of the reasons i see no real basis for genetics in mentality, i chose what mental models i want to use and use them as i will. your response to females is purely mental, its not that your not trying hard enough, your just not thinking of it the right way(at least in my opinion). i mean if i really wanted to I'm sure i could elicit a sexual response to a brick wall in myself if i found myself so inclined(it basicly equates to something along the lines of auto-hypnosis).(ofcoerce this is invalidated since I'm probably a shizotype, and all the fun mental abilities, disorders, abnormalities, and quirks that come with that) i was also never abused or mistreated in any way also this dosen't account for lesbians, who lack the SRY region on the sex chromosomes and are verry much female brains another fun thing... you know who else have large amounts of estodiol women, lack of it dosen't mean you have a female brain it means you have a rather abnormal brain structure if you lacked aromatase you would have http://en.wikipedia....tase_deficiency there has been no linkage between this and homosexuality found(it has been tested for before look up DuPree 2004. (im not a neuroscientist tho so i could be wrong)

ugh... brain masculinisation look if your talking about brain masculinisation or lack there of, its testosterone receptors, Dihydrotestosterone receptors, and a few other androgen receptors that aren’t that major. if you have a malfunction in these yes your brain will "feminize" so will everything else... its a disease called AIS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_Insensitivity_Syndrome simply put they would not look like men they would look like women "gay" men are generally very proud of being masculine not feminine and actively aim to be so simply put that argument dosen't make any sense whatsoever and the relationship between face structure and sexuality, honestly I don’t see any, and I never have gay men do have similar mannerisms and behaviour patterns(these are usually put on as a show to some extents, as I have met gay men that you really couldn’t tell were gay by how they behaved), but similar facial structure or any other phenotypic characteristics aren’t shared(except maybe the Y chromosome...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States illinois Percentage of State Population homosequal 3.8% the point I'm making here is that 11% of the adoptive brothers were homosexual in this sample, 3x the normal value for the population.(and this study was from 91 when attitudes to gays were worse then they are now) i may be wrong but this appears to show a relationship which is more mental then genetic. the higher rates of MZ and DZ twins can be attributed to how close the relationship between the pairs(after all if your veritable clone appears to like men why shouldn’t you give it a shot) the Xq28 locus though dose seem to suggest that there may be some genetic link, though i have not seen any data showing whether this data extends to straight men at all. also it has been disputed by other studies done in Canada http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10213693 Koch's postulates are really useful things if you apply them to genetics you need to: 1. isolate the causative agent (gene) 2. show its non existent in a normal individual (the wilds type) 3. show that if its inserted into a normal individual they will develop the trait (the wonders of lab rats)

I'm a biologist so the optimist in me would say we will achieve biological mortality soon enough. unfortunately I'm also a pragmatic bastard... the most likely route, at least initially towards physical mortality is and allays will be cybernetics. at the moment technology research in physics and machinery has outpaced biology research by about 50-100 years depending what scale you want to use, making it far easier to replace body parts with reliable machines then it is with biological components. there is also the great animosity and distrust towards anything GM, this means GM humans and research into this field is severely limited and is unlikely to lead to any great results that will be publicly available results in at least the next 40 years. on the other hand the technological singularity point for computers is predicted to be 2045 at that point machines will outperform humans by such a great factor(1000x the speed and complexity of a human brain) that mental augmentation, at the very least, will become fairly widespread just so people can keep up with what a machine is doing. this generally results in a slippery slope towards full acceptance of the technology and outright implementation(another example of this is the car vs the horse, tv vs radio, steam/combustion vs electric propulsion(still happening today)). Of coerce I've read in some sifi books(yes I read, no its not a bad thing, sifi dose make valid points, think star trek and their awesome automatic doors) a interesting and fairly valid statement "some species had the time to go from biological bodies to full machines and back again" simply put biology is extremely tiny machines working together to make a body(an example: Homo sapien) currently our technology is large and bulky, but eventually it will be made on par or better then the biological counterparts allowing a return to biology(or at the very least some semblance of the such) edit the timeline(according to google) http://xkcd.com/887/ notable events: 2100 Gillette introduces 14 bladed razor and by that point we have 3 resurrected Jesus running around

what i was saying in a very sarcastic manner is that any studies showing heritability of a PERSONALITY TRAIT must be a separation study, otherwise the data from it is completely invalid. like for example accents and speech patterns. I'm sure you could show familial inheritance of such things if all your subjects live together, this dose not mean that accents are genetic. many people think that homosexuality is some form of disorder or disease, this spawns rather narrow-minded approaches to the problem, and really biased results. what it is is a personality trait. yes personality traits can have biological causes, fine examples are, voodoo wasps, testosterone(aggression), and numerous recreational drugs, but this dose not mean that all personality traits is genetic.(i know those are rather extreme examples and only 1 of those it genetic in origin)

random mutation is just a blanket term for a lard swathe of not so random events that can happen to your poor abused DNA strands examples of such things are(drum roll) 1. mutagens(natural, artificial and biological) examples: virus, uv light(and everything above it), chemicals, reactive oxygen species, physical damage(hitting your toe with a hammer) 2. your own body examples: DNA replication(its done by proteins that have the copying ability of a 8 year old; atagagg atagagg atacagg atacagg...), DNA repair systems not repairing things so well, wear and tear from all the busy unwinding rewinding transcribing that goes on(fits into DNA repair) 3. not so spontaneous events simply put at the molecular level sometimes "shit happens" and molecular bonds may decide that they would much rather be attached to that sexy little water molecule then the long boring DNA strand and can kind of run off with it(or if your going with the analogy elope) it happens rarely and there is mathematics physics and chemistry that will explain the why, when, where, and how sexy an oxygen attached to 2 hydrogens atoms can be(but i don’t know all those equations and am not writing a 500 page report on it).

ight this is tiring what you need to prove heritability is large scale separation studies and twin studies(especially with behavioural traits such as being homosexual) (this means you take 2 twins at birth away from their gay parents that probably adopted them or had IVF(hmmm now this seems kind of odd) to another country and raise them there in isolation from homosexuals) or you need to demonstrate that it is actually a biochemical process(preferably by showing it is reversible via inhibition or promotion of said biochemical process) then you can point and say its really genetic or haven’t you ever picked up bad habits from your parents such as their annoying habit to stuff shelves full of clutter or GOD FORBID and accent... yep all things considered accents must be genetic! and contagious... i can make a heritability studies to prove it! look my grandpa had it my father had it i have it! in otherwords hetrosequality is really hard to prove to be genetic, at least with any certainty but feel free to preform the test and tell chilcren they have the GAY GENE( this will amuse me to no end when they do turn out to be gay or bi just cause you told them they have to be)

OK association studies... anyone remember when they said that aids only gay people get aids? they aren’t really accurate, they aren’t reliable, and unless you are doing whole genome analysis they should be taken with a brick and a half of salt. the way most association studies are done is that a small sample of subjects are screened, then a gene shared between the sample group(note i said a not "the") gene is screened for in a larger sample, should this gene show a positive correlation, EURICA its the gene you were looking for, should it not its on to the next one... its not a very reliable technique unless the gene in question is studied in detail afterwards and UNDERSTOOD(this means you know what it dose on a molecular level and how it achieves its effect). even then this only gives a predisposition... in other-words XX% of people with the gene could be homosexual not if you have the gene you will be homosexual, in all likelihood a large portion of the population will have that gene and will not be gay, or lesbian(yes there dose exist such a thing as women my friend)

what to say about GM humans... has anyone watched gundam seed? that should sum up pretty well the pros and cons of GM humans PRO: adapted to your environment(space) smarter stronger tougher more healthy CONS: normal humans(or at least a portion of them) wont like you that much not much else dose anyone see a very large bias here? or course there will be a few mistakes along the way(rogue experimentation into [come up with something], simple mistakes resulting in bad results, the occasional riot or protest) but in the end you will have better more healthy individuals. but the truth is why stop at the baseline human design? [puts on mad scientist hat] why not super-genious octopus? I mean once you expand the body size, tweak it for survival on land and water, and reinforce its biology, you have a really good body design. you can theoreticaly grow the brain as large as you want since the skull is only a single bone plate. its far easier to regenerate damage without bones no vertebrate, means no back pain, no arthritis, no broken bones and who hasen't ever wished to have 8 arms(that 6 more then you usually have) [takes off mad scientist hat] but truthfully humans are really badly designed organisms, sure we have big brains, but our intelligence and aptitude for tools originated from what is believed to be a single mutation. and our body design has suffered quite badly for this, we have poor bone structure, an appendix, quite a high incidence of cancer, baldness, tendency towards neuro-degenerative diseases, no real regeneration to speak of, and really poor adaptation to any environment. why should we not improve on the next generation? we do it with cars, we do it with our food, we do it with our houses. what’s really wrong with doing it with ourselves? we have the techniques and the technology.

1. nature v nurture 2. touchy subject 3. do you have proof there even is a gay gene 4. its probably multi factorial if it even exists(not fun to search for multi-factorial genes even if they have clear phenotype relation, this dose not by any definition of the word have clear phenotype relationships) 5. we may all have it but it may have low penetrance in the population 6. its probably psychological 7. straight people don't try being gay so how do we know they are really straight, gay people like being gay, and bi people? 8. why should we care(scientists are only interested in interesting things, searching for a gene that may or may not exist, which will have every gay right campaigner after your head dose not sound interesting, unless your the masochistic type) also look up threre's a thread about almost the same thing 2 up

fundamentaly the key to most warfare is control, genetics in this respect is ideal, it allows accurate, targeted approach to the target. well at least if you know who your target is. lets say you have a DNA sample of [insert silly name here] and want them dead. you design an organism with a receptor for their particular cell surface proteins, then unload an airborne version of [deadly disease causing bacterium] targeted to their specific genes over the city they are in, if its a contact vector type bacterium you will eventualy get them once they touch something that was outside during the seeding procedure. in an ideal world yes genetics is the most wonderful weapon you can imagine, but, and there always a but, genetic engineering hasen't progressed far enough that such designer bioweapons can be made, nor is the production cheap, nor is it nearly as effective and well thought out. in the end we have a long time to wait till we have any fears of bioWARFARE, we do have a problem though with bioTERRORISM. someone stupid enough to make a bioweapon these days will make it without any selectivity, controll, or any way to really clean up after themselves after their weapon has inevitably screwed up and either failed to have any real effect(till it comes back 10 years down the line as the new and improved superbug(not saying any disease was a bioweapon, nature can be nasty as well)) or they have infected half the world and killed the other half(including themselves in the process) simply put 99.9% of human DNA dosen't vary between one person and the next and humans are quite numerous so if you use genetics your bound to have world wide collateral damage, well unless you are a super genius with an iq of 200 and idiot savant level of obsession over bioweaponry, but I havent met any of those around here.

simply put being homosexual has been shown in something like 400 different species, and probably a lot more while we weren’t looking, so looking for the gay gene is wrong, you should be looking for the straight gene, or better yet a psychologist. behaviour is dictated by chemical interactions in the brain, so at a genetic level it is possible to predispose an individual to particular reactions, to for example pheromones of the same sex, or even their body shape, thus making said individual more inclined to liking certain genders, but this can just as easily be achieved or counteracted by learned experience, mostly during the developmental stages early in life. the fun thing about this is that people learn in not so straight forward ways, and do so even before they have been born and in early childhood, these associations form quite quickly and the results are fairly permanent another issue is all these allegedly straight people, they haven’t tried being gay, or even bi have they. this is like saying you don’t like broccoli cause its green before ever taking a bite, you might discover you like it if you give it a good go without any prejudice. well that just based on my experience and what i know of genetics, developmental biology, human psychology, learning patterns, and some zoology thrown in for good measure

some key milestones that i can think of in terms of DNA, genetic engineering, ect... would be: efficient simulation of DNA-->tertiary protein (this can be done at the moment, but the algorithms are at the best of times only about 80% correct), this leads on to whole genome simulation of an organisms development(this is only a problem of computation) most of the actual manual labour for decoding DNA and its analysis has already been done, at the moment the process is just being streamlined for efficiency, speed and volume. most notably mass screening of whole genomes and the analysis can be good milestones; ie the first 1000, 10000, 100000, genomes screened would give insight into patterns and effects of certain genotypes when related to the observed phenotype, this would really be the most important component for genetic treatment of disease and various other desirable characteristics The previous comment also ties into another component vital for genetics, public acceptance of genetics and mass utilisation of the treatments offered. this will influence investment and research into genetics and is the deciding factor of how far we progress into the field. another milestone is then genetics become commercially viable, this has already happened with plants(GM crops, still not accepted in the EU) and animals(although pet shops still dont stock glow in the dark cats, they do stock glow in the dark fish thou) the next milestone in this progression would be "GM humans" ie. designer babies(this would require detailed understanding of the effects of genes and their interactions, and demonstratable advantages for the treatments) what we currently know about genes(don’t quote me on this I'm just taking these numbers from memory and its a bit shoddy) we have somewhere in the area of 100,000 protein structures mapped("As of Tuesday Aug 28, 2012 at 5 PM PDT there are 84223 Structures" thank you pdb) we have mapped the human genome we have some notion of how structure relates to function(but this is only based on what we have seen before and not a real understanding of proteins) we know a lot about regulatory systems for DNA transcription and intron exon boundarys the use of micro RNA for various manipulation of transcripts and as protein regulators and various other details all that we know comes down to experimental knowledge, most of which has not been compiled or analysed sufficiently to allow theoretical knowledge to translate to practice. a nice analogy is we know that you can build a tower and we can build a wall, and indeed maybe even a small house, but we haven’t quite gotten to the stage of building sky scrapers. If I got something wrong please don’t kill me, I'm scrawny and wont taste good in a stew...

Hi im a graduate of Molecular biology and genetics, currently unemployed, joining up to the forum to learn and keep up to date with the field. I'm interested in almost every aspect in biology, and tend to dabble in other sciences, so you'll probably see me around a bit.