homosexual gene?!

[clerval]

hia

 

im a third year psychology student looking at the possibility of a gay gene. i go to university in london, the uk. i need as many men both gay and straight to fill in a quick questionnaire. all you have to do is email me at claireorrells93@hotmail.com and ill send it to you. please help a desperate uni student. also, i kinda need all the participants to be from the UK

 

thanks

 

claire

[Dak]

Just out of interest, what's a psycologist doing investigating the possibility that homosexuality is genetic? I'd have thought that a genetisist would do that, and a psycologist would investigate the possible learnt origins of it?

 

Anyway, curiosity aside, it might be worth PMing a mod and asking them to move this out of genetics and into general discussion, as you will likely get more responses that way, unless you want some actual genetics questions answred.

[Hegemony]

I think the concept of a "homosexual gene" is preposterous. Most prevalent genes afford the individual a reproductive advantage. Having a gene that causes someone to have little if any sexual contact with the opposite gender makes no evolutionary sense. I know that some gay people reproduce before they realize they are gay, but not nearly to the degree that heterosexual people do in their life times. It's like a creature that's not quite as good at living in a certain environment as another... one's more likely to win.

[Dak]

that's like saying that recessively fatal genes can't exist, cos they give the organism a reproductive disadvantage.

[NPK]

Wouldn't that mean there's a gay protein? What function would that protein nhave to cause gayness?

[Hegemony]

I somehow doubt that a "homosexual gene" would be a recessive trait. That usually refers to the production (or lack) of a protein. Fatal genetic conditions are passed on when the person is a "carrier" and still produces the protein in question. It's like saying you are gay if you have two bad copies of a gene and don't produce your "straight proteins".

 

edit: NPK posted while I was typing... kinda what I was getting at.

[tejaswini]

i doubt if it's got something to do with genes. as npk rightly said there has to be a protein or enzyme that the gene should encode. so probably it is nothing genetic.

[The Peon]

I would think homosexual desires would be more from an "imbalance" of hormones in ones biochemical makeup rather than a specific gene. Lets face it, chemicals force us to feel certain things regardless if we want to or not. Take testosterone for instance... Thats just my 2 cents and makes more sense to me than a gay gene.

[dttom]

I would rather believe it is caused by the environment. A previous report said that male with lots of elder brothers would have a higher possibility to suffer, due to the immune system of mother. For the first time of the mother pregent, 'male substance' enter the mother's body while her immune system can not do much on it, while in later pregnacies, her immune system may work aganist the 'male substance', for example testosterone, and thus cause the expression.

[ecoli]

Wouldn't that mean there's a gay protein? What function would that protein nhave to cause gayness?

 

So, hormones aren't proteins now? IT's possible that one of the effects of a "gay gene" (if one existed, if would probably be several gene clusters, if not dozens) would produce more estrogene, or a chemical that make attracted to male pheromones. A homosexual gene is not very preposterous in terms of biochemistry. Especially considering that there is a single gene responsible for sexual orientation in Fruit flies... why not humans??

 

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/03/news/cell.php

[tejaswini]

would produce more estrogene, or a chemical that make attracted to male pheromones. [url']http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/03/news/cell.php[/url]

if that was the case then don't u think that this will have it's effects on physical features, like gynecomastia etc.i mean they are normal males to look at, umm... atleast that is what i think. imbalance in the levels of harmones is not tolerated by the body. they will show some kind of defect or the other.

[squishyspong]

I just remember the fruit fly gene experiment where the flies turned gay with a modification of a gene.