different take on homosexual gene

[mr d]

hello

 

seeing all the post lately on the topic of the 'homosexual gene', surprised me as i thought this subject talked out years ago. so what i'd like to do for a change of direction is suggest a different idea on the subject.

which is this. that you are not born or gay or straight. but born with both possibilities present in your body. which body chemicals, possible hormonal in nature trigger at a certain developemental stage causing sexual preferrence.

reasons

1) every human born recieves 2 primary base dna strands, and two secondary sets of dna the materlineal (mitrochondrial) and paternal dna. exceptions being x female or xxy males.

2) orientation differences between pairs of identical twins runs at the same as the general population. if a single gene where the cause of preferrence all identical twins should show same orientation as both possess exactly same genentic composition (conclusion dependant on honesty of study subjects truthful responces).

3) person with AIS(androgen insensitivity syndrome) or Swyer syndrome, commonly referred to as xy females demonstrate presence of female traits and physical structure are present in genetic males.

for those unaware all fetus's developement is the same during the first two months of gestation.

at that time a fetal structure called the gonad is influence by hormones called androgens, or the lack their of. these hormones are triggered by the presence of paternal dna in association with the y chromosone. only a y chromesone can cause these hormones naturally. what this does is cause the gonad to drop to form the teste to produce a male. if not present by lack of a y chromosone, or malfunction in the y chromosone to produce the gonad moves into the body to form overies.

all fetus's in the absence androgens develope as female. however xy females are always sterile.

yes you are half you mother and half your father. this must also includes gender specific personality traits passed down through the parents. or to use a computing term your basic operating system (presumption based on deduction from various data sources and observation). traits which normally blend but are heavily influenced as to which are dominant based on the presents of and or absence of gender specific chemicals\hormones. much in the same way physical developement of body structures are influences. example: brown eye are dominant over blue, but in children of such parents the child's eye color though tending toward brown is usually not as dark as the parent's. why? though the brown is dominant the blue color does still show some influence.

the same probally holds true for orientaion, you recieved from your mother a preference for men, from your father for women. in societies where there is no taboo on men and women tend to engage in activities with partners of either gender, but tend to still show a preferences directed toward the opposite gender than themselves, and develope attachments for the formation of family units. best guess for reason would be simple biological imperative to reproduce. your main reason for attraction between men and women invovles the need to produce offspring. if everyone was homosexual come back in 140 years and see what remains of the human race. again this attraction would be suspected to be driven by firstly genetic physical and emotional traits, followed by accepted practices of the subject's culture.

example being a man sees a rounded shaped posterior and long flowing shiny hair, and feels that urge of attraction, only to have the person turn around and they're a guy (think this has happen to about every male out there). are they a latent homosexual, no, mostly likely you were simply attracted to a body shape a type of hair design you were preprogrammed to find attractive as the traits tend to be displayed most often in the female of our species. (though if you have and insecure subject enjoy tormenting them, personal reflection.)

test in birds where colored feather displays found in males were attached to females, the female birds were challenged by by male birds as male and courted by female birds. meaning the birds were predesigned to recognise that physical attribute, no schools or parental lectures here to teach the birds. it is part of their genetic makeup.

humans are still animals though our ego may protest such a designation. if you think back on your own memories of how you developed feelings where you wished to engage in reproductive activites, i doubt anyone reading this needed to be educated to have these feelings. they developed normally because they were already coded into you.

so what does this rambling mean for the homosexual gene? simply this, that these individuals merely had a set of genes where the opposite sex's preferred orientation was blended as the stronger of the two giving them what we class as homsexuality. most likely cause: genetic damage- defect in the portion of associated standard preference genetic material, present at time of conception or produced during subsequent genetic replication. or higher viability of genetic material provided by opposite gender. also this would include other personality traits associated with opposite sex designation, hence what is often referred to as effeminate males or musculine females, whom display what would be considered adolesent emotional feelings and traits. this may or may not include orientation. am i hinting sissy males and butch females, no it means as your sexuality is brought forward during adolesence other traits associated with male or female developement at this time would also be activated genetically. depending on duration of time during which your body has in crude terms misidentified your gender, combined with how your male and female traits blend, would produce physical and personality traits described as across gender.

example: softer facial features in a male. or a male displaying a giggly personality that would be classified as more female. does not denote homosexuality, only that that trait shower great influence from what is considered genetic opposite sex.

if this could be the case it would also go a ways to explaining to some extent transvestism, transexuals, and transgenders. it very well be a person saying i'm a man trapped in a woman's body , or the opposite could be exactly the case. genetic material was for one gender, emotional traits taken from the opposite gender.

 

one question i would have of readers is, does anyone have rates for homosexuality for women and for men seperate. would like to see if homosexuality or lesbianism in females is lower, possibly due to a more balanced set of xx genes (male children tend to be more suseptable to disease and suffer a higher insodence of genetic birth disorders).

 

long winded strange thought

 

mr d

[pink_trike]

People of both genders (male and female) and sexual orientations (homo/het) fall all over the masculine/feminine spectrum.How does your theory account for very masculine, male-identified gay men, and very feminine, female-identified lesbians? (These types account for at least 50% of all gay people). Or masculine-appearing straight women and effeminate or passive straight men who account for a large number of the het population?

[mr d]

hello

 

actually the conjector (don't really consider it a theory) explains these condiction very simply. a homosexual male who is still very defined as masculine, was a man who aquired merely more of the his female parents orientation to preference of men. however his physical form and traits we culturally consider male was taken from his father genes.

where an effeminate male who is staight aquired some physical and emotional traits from his mother but when his genetic orientation was decided the his father's orientation proved the more valid of the pair and he aquired a hetrosexual orientation.

though above i refer to aquire materal or paternal traits a better way to think of it would be more of sliders. in gender preference in sexual partners imagine a slider with male on one end and female at the other. your parents give you genes that wish to push that slider one way or the other, however gender specific chemicals\hormones cause that slider to be pushed more in one direction or the other. meaning all people are placed on a broad spectrum, with some pushed almost totally toward male while others for female. while others may end up more towards the middle, and in our society are usually referred to as bisexuals (though most bisexuals usually do have a preference, it probaly is just less of a preference than in others).

such a system when attached to the broad range of physical and emotion human traits (eye color, height, weight, tactal sensitivity, ability for empathy, feels of compassion) would make a nearly unlimited number of designs(though within design parameters) possible amoung mankind. even siblings born to the same parent while limited by the genetic material supplied would still occupy a broad spectrum of appearence and emotional temperment.

 

mr d

[gcol]

hello

 

 

though above i refer to aquire materal or paternal traits a better way to think of it would be more of sliders. in gender preference in sexual partners imagine a slider with male on one end and female at the other. your parents give you genes that wish to push that slider one way or the other' date=' however gender specific chemicals\hormones cause that slider to be pushed more in one direction or the other. meaning all people are placed on a broad spectrum, with some pushed almost totally toward male while others for female. while others may end up more towards the middle, and in our society are usually referred to as bisexuals (though most bisexuals usually do have a preference, it probaly is just less of a preference than in others).

such a system when attached to the broad range of physical and emotion human traits (eye color, height, weight, tactal sensitivity, ability for empathy, feels of compassion) would make a nearly unlimited number of designs(though within design parameters) possible amoung mankind. even siblings born to the same parent while limited by the genetic material supplied would still occupy a broad spectrum of appearence and emotional temperment.

 

mr d[/quote']

 

I rather like the "slider" model, with all the variables factored in. (problem....no one would agree as to how much weight, let alone pos/neg, to assign the variables, so round and around we would go).There was another topic recently, good/evil and morality. I tried to introduce the concept there, but it did not catch on. Interestingly, you would identify a middle position. What sort of sexual orientation would that be? Surely unhelpful to call it the norm? Or would the ideal male and female traits be those furthest from the norm? I suggest the extremes would be not totally pleasant. I could ramble on, but wont, see if anyone else picks it up.

[mr d]

hello

 

as stated above sexuality balanced person would be a true bisexual, which many people equate simple with have sex with both men and women but tend to involve a wide range of emotions.

if a person was more across the board in emotional and physical traits, i believe they would be percieve as androgenous.

another question i would have for any one aquainted with genetics out there is this. a women with her xx chromsones get one through materlineal lineage, the other through paterial. hence siblings can vary to a large degree in appearance dependant on lineage of thier x. the question is does this apply to the secondary mitrochondrial dna. does it always match the primarily selected x or can it be from the opposite, or a combination of both.

one way would mean two possible combination of X1m1-X2m2. while the second means possibility of X1m1- X1m2, X2m1- X2m2. present an even wider range of possibilities.

 

mr d

[Dak]

2) orientation differences between pairs of identical twins runs at the same as the general population. if a single gene where the cause of preferrence all identical twins should show same orientation as both possess exactly same genentic composition (conclusion dependant on honesty of study subjects truthful responces).

 

Do you have a citation for the above? I had a quick look-see, and it seems that the above may not be the case (or at least has not been established beyond doubt)¹

[mr d]

hello

 

though i couldn't find the study i was looking for it was conducted at least a decade ago, as stated above, i did not concieve we'd still be discuusing this matter, i did find these two that do point to a much higher correlation in same orientation amoung identical twins. anywhere from 16% to 60%, though i would still have questions about the mz study's sample group. but i'll concide to a higher rate. however it does not invadidate the theory. why? any fairly high difference in the orientation, still 25%-75%, points to the conclusion that a single gene does not exists to control sexual orientation. with the possible exception that there is a high mutation rate or high rate of genetic damage to the supposed gene.

 

take a look here. even if your not inthralled in this subject, it is an interesting read just to see how much your genetic material is believe to determine your personality.

 

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/neimark/TWIN1.HTM

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics_and_sexual_orientation

 

i still have some interest in finding the study i was thinking about from the statement above.

reason being it actually had little to do with orientation in twins, but i believe mental levels. the orientation bit was just part of data collected, and the reason i remember is how that data was siezed on by the media, with insueing fun caused by the religious right vs the gay community. the big push then was for the single gene theory amoungst that community, the right siezed this data to say if there was this difference that something external or sickness caused homosexuality. logic following that money should be spent on research to discover this cause so that a treatment could be developed. i kid you not.

i remember seeing researchers on some semi-news program trying to distance themselves from that data, even hinting at its irrelivance to the study and how it might be remove.

 

on to the soap box for a moment, please indulge.

yes if this conjecture is true yes a supposed treatment to prevent homosexually could be possible. of course this would involve discovering the chemicals\hormones involved. the exact gene, the exact cell(s) the body uses to take the gentic code from. you have billions of these, a determination of the exact split moment a dose of cure would have to be applied, remember every cell in the body would require treatment at the exact same moment to assure complete treatment. plus need to be able to monitor the body to somehow predetermine the precise moment this gene will be activated, you have to time your treatment to match. also you'd have to insure and almost immediate return to previous levels of this hormone\chemical so as not to affect other genetic developement (physical and emotional) that it is triggering at this time.

 

as homosexuality appears present in other animals, plus does anyone remember the necrophilic mallard duck, it seems that it is just exceptable to the genetic system evolved. with nature deciding that the condiction poses no direct threat to a species survival. well we are near 6 billion so i don't think there's any dire threat here.

 

for those still concerned think on this. the system maybe inplace so that as stress rises in overcrowded population the gene combination may trigger higher levels of homosexuality, as a natural means of population control and reduction.

(no there is nothing at all to this statement, but let's just have some fun playing mind games with so inclined individuals).

 

lastly what i would find reason for concern is that if such information for cause and cure was discovered, who would you trust with that information. because if you can cure it, chances are very good you can cause it. plus what happens if a goverment in currently or comes to power, they have at least the means to determine who can pass on such genetic material. what if do to economics or beliefs they decided such people should not be allowed to breed, would we see forced sterilization. plus do you think their might be people out there who if they discovered by test their child was going to be homosexual might decide to abort the fetus?

 

got to stop these ramblings

 

do read the twin studies if you have time. might make an interesting topic to discuss someday.

perhaps one of these post i'll tell why i originally was thinking up this conjecture, and no it wasn't orientation.

 

strange thoughts

mr d

[WillTheNewf]

Imo, the only reason why we have so little insight into the causes of homosexuality is that gay male/female statistics are too off balanced from the enormous amount of closet gays in society. Do we truly know all identical twins aren't either gay or straight? It could be very likely that one of the twins was gay while the other was a closet. This is just an opinion though

[mattbimbo]

mr d, there may be a genetic basis, but what about a viral/immunological basis? others have had this idea for a number of conditions, including homosexuality.

[mattbimbo]

there is also a wikipedia link for the pathogenic theory of homosexuality..

 

by the way, mr d your numbers

1) every human born recieves 2 primary base dna strands, and two secondary sets of dna the materlineal (mitrochondrial) and paternal dna. exceptions being x female or xxy males.

should be expressed correctly and the idea of primary and secondary is totally invented. and if one is going to talk probabilities, i'd like to see some numbers, ranging between 0 and 1.

 

if anyone wants some recent references on the genetic basis of sexual orientation, this paper is a good starting point. as a paper it shows how from a small sample (456 individuals from 146 families with two or more gay brothers) that straight-forward statistics do not give clear results.

[mr d]

hello

 

your xx\xy or concidered the base pair as they provide the code, or building blocks for the constuction of a human. the secondary set appears more concerned with interpretation and implementation of the primary genes.

secondly viral\immunological explaination. since most mammalian species are reported to show what we humans interpret as a percentage of homosexual orientation. such a virus would have to be able to invect the intire species from rats to dogs, to cats to people. possible but highly unlikely. also that so wide spread a virus, as animals and people cover near the entire earth's land masses, has thoughout medical history evaded detection is again unlikely. unless you are arguing for a dorment viral infection naturally carried in all mammals?

also that it would given such a range infect such a low percentage of the population not so likely, only possible explaination i could fore see that might explain such a statistic would be most people are born with a natural immunitiy. such a natural immunity would perclude that at sometime in the past, the 'homosexual virus' attacked the human population infecting a huge percentage of them causing a homosexual explosion. the human race surviving because those so infected where no longer incline to breed with opposite sex partners. resault their subsepiablity to the virus render those people extinct, but the now dormant virus was carried in the surviving population, and occasionally genetic damage or mutation in a child makes them vunerable.

plus unless as i suggest the possiblities of both orientations are possible at birth, said virus would have to invade the body have the means to invade the cells that determine orientation (which we have no idea which they are) and rewrite genetic code to bring about a change.

that said, virus's can not rewrite genetic code (if someone knows of such please post information), they might damage the genetic material in cases. but as above unless the possibility of both orientations are already there, the virus can not suppressed one orientation or the other. which also brings up another question, as their are both amle and female forms of homosexuality, you would need two forms of the virus for all species. one that could identify a male and one that could identify a female. because a virus that just caused a male to find other males attractive, would have not effect on making a female suddenly find females attractive.

 

 

mr d

[mattbimbo]

mrd

your xx\xy or concidered the base pair as they provide the code, or building blocks for the constuction of a human. the secondary set appears more concerned with interpretation and implementation of the primary genes.

again, this is invented. you may understand what you mean but i don't.

 

your criticism for a pathogenic cause has many very good points! many of which are better than mine. i also liked your explosion scenario. but viruses can rewrite genetic code. look up viral oncogenes for instance. and the nervous system does harbour viruses, including fetal nervous systems. look up herpesvirus fetus for instance.

 

mr d,you seem fairly convinced that sexual orientation is determined at birth - is this so? the strongest quote of yours that sticks in my mind is

individuals merely had a set of genes where the opposite sex's preferred orientation was blended as the stronger of the two giving them what we class as homsexuality.

according to this you are implying sexuality undergoes mendelian inheritance, but you don't seem to like this because you follow with

cause: genetic damage- defect in the portion of associated standard preference genetic material, present at time of conception or produced during subsequent genetic replication. or higher viability of genetic material provided by opposite gender.

 

so am i right are you ultimately saying homosexuality is the result of genetic damage, not necessarily paternal or maternal, just (everyday?) damage that occurs with a natural frequency of 10%. this is unlikely!

[mr d]

Hello

 

firstly do i believe orientation determined at birth. no i do not. my conjector is at birth you are born as a sexual null. meaning oriention no at birth , but genetically you have been incoded for both orientation for parents genetic material. earliest stages of developement would most likely put you at a monosexual, meaning a sexual awardness of self (embarrasing time for parents or sitters out in public. a little levity there, but i thnink a few will know what i mean). later as your body developes, physical mental and emotional developement occurs to prepare you for entry into the breeding population. a guess would be around 9-12 years of age, a basic oriention is set forth, or to simply put it: as a boy girls are no longer icky and you start wondering just why they are built differently. again design is for reproduction of species, if your not interested in the opposite sex for a species like humans your species is dead.

after this point your body would develope fully for biologic reproduction, approximately 13-16 years, while you would also fully develope physical, mental and emotional traits to help signal your readiness to usually opposite sex individuals for the purpose of matting and producing offspring.at this time you would also develope the more complex emotions for love and caring that would cause the type of bonding structure needed for the upbringing of children.

i realize some may thing those ages a bit young, but it is based more on phyiscal viability then accepted age.

in the case of oncogenes, usually seen in cancer growth, they appear to develope from proto-oncogenes which may be by damage by infection and/or possible insertion of viral code which may first take the appearance of genetic proteins. but as in most such cases the take over of the gene, along with how the aids virus uses t-cels, is to provide the means for the virus's replication by having the invected cells create more virus's, or by celluar subdivision.

this would tend to nesessitate there being in a human body a location for the cells responcible for human orientation, and that this virus could gain access for subsiquent infection. plus it would bring up a question as to why? virus's exist to infect a host to use for self replication or as a source of nutients for the virus to grow most commonly in celluar mass such as a tumor. could you see a reason that such a virus would attack a human body for the purpose of inducing orientation change? also such invasions should produce some form of infected of tissue that should be detectable(viral infections target specific systems so there should be found both contaminated and uncontaminated cells). or do you suggest a complete change in the genetic state of the infected individual without observable change.

secondly what would be your means of viral transmission (air-waterborn, latent, direct contact.), and what would be the body system used for the virus to reach the targeted cels? if the infected person comes into contact with others why not a greater incident of cross infection. in a home why not more family members, in a school why not more classmates. and if a virus carrying out genetic alteration what is there not infection of individuals at anny age, a virus rewritting the code of a four year old should be able to rewrite the code of a fourty year old. continued viability of such a virus would tend to mean it would have to carry its own survival out through transmission.

in my system you have a slider, male-female, genetic materials or chemicals-hormones gentically related push that slider more to one side or the other based on parental gene contribution with a boost brought on the sex specific hormones-chemicals produced by the body. therefore depending on genes and homones involved, you can produce an individual whose orientation could appear anywhere along that slider. mix this with other sliders (sexual desire, hair color, hearing range, etc...) you can easily use limited amount of genetic material to create a much broader range of individuals.

however as these genes and chemicals-hormones come into play,the actually makeup of the material(all genes are not equal), any genetic damage (either through replication or outside influence, which could be caused by viral infection altering the gene or more likely altering the chemical-hormone balance), can influence the direction that slider may be push in uninfluenced circumstances.

meaning change-mutation possible in all areas, some harmful some not. in the case of orientation the human species is not imperiled by such changes. nearly six billion and counting.

 

mr d

[sunspot]

The idea of a Gay gene is sort of ridiculous. Being gay is a complex behavior with all type of psychological and environmental angles. All the detail that MrD kindly shared with us can not be explained with only one gene. One gene is only one protein. If one said it is caused by a large group or cluster of genes, maybe 10-1000, than it would sound more reasonable and could actually account for every step of the process.

 

On the other hand, if it was a cluster of genes there should be a random distribution of every combination among the gay population.

[mattbimbo]

All the detail that MrD kindly shared with us can not be explained with only one gene.

yes and no, one gene can be modified in many ways due to RNA processing etc; there are genes, give me time to remember them, which have over 1000 splice variants.

If one said it is caused by a large group or cluster of genes, maybe 10-1000, than it would sound more reasonable and could actually account for every step of the process.

On the other hand, if it was a cluster of genes there should be a random distribution of every combination among the gay population.

(note, 1000 genes is about 4% of the human genome)

do i rightly understand this? if a condition/illness involves a large number of genes, you expect it to occur randomly and with the observed frequency of 10%?

 

mr D

my conjector is at birth you are born as a sexual null. meaning oriention no at birth , but genetically you have been incoded for both orientation for parents genetic material.

but there is a fair body of evidence for the determination of sexual orientation in the womb. suprisingly this never came up in the recent thread on circumcision.

[mr d]

hello

 

firstly i'll explain it agian.

there is no homosexual gene, the conjector is for the existence of sexual orientation that would be part of a sexual identity co-related in an individual by multible genes or for simple explaination sliders that have genetic material contributed parents on opposite ends of that slider.

and example your father has black hair, your mother blond, while there is a change one of their genes may take dominance and your hair color will be exactly as one parent or the other. but in most cases your hair will be a combination of the two, with a greater or lesser degree of one parent's color having a greater or lesser degree of dominance due to the dominant trait plus viability of the material contributed with possible inclusion of external influence that effects the levels of chemicals\ hormones\ secondary rna proteins...

no it does not mean that gene made you gay, it means on your slider of orientation you are more inclined to be attracted to persons of the same sex. and as it is a slider individuals may be placed anywhere along its lenght with levels of attraction allowing for male and female partners.. but that is only for orientation. but that is only for orientation.

next up may come your slider for desire for sex, you may get a large desire factor, three times a day is not enough, or it might be once every two weeks is fine with you. (side note: if you have randy 40 year old parents be happy, if frisky 60 year old grand parents be elated. the range of your slider probably came from them.).

at the same time this is happening other physical and emotion traits are being desided. with some degree of cross influence, or more likely in the case of emotions responce centers in the brain are being sized, formed and how well the neurons involved respond. through disection it has been shown that the brains of homosexual show signs of opposite sex developement. yes the brains of men and women do differ. so you maybe a male but your slider for compassion is forced more toward your mothers level, giving you a more female aspect to your personality there. but the information for shape of your throat favors your father, so you have the deeper pitched voice of a male. this mixing would included every aspect of your physical and emotional developement. which explains the wide range in gay personalities and shapes, and at the same time for those hetrosexuals as well. gay is not normal or abnormal, it just implies you were given a slider orientation that socieity considers to be opposite of current social expectations. and opposite to what nature requires for species reproduction in a breeding population.

as to your 10% rate (i've seen 5-7%, but no matter), if you check rates for babies born with cleft palettes, or webbed fingers and toes (evolutionary vestage or sign of the devil your choice), or clubbed foot all have rates near or surpassing your 10%. if you were bulding a system as complex as a humanbeing, 90% coming out physically and emotionally according to plans would be quite a feat considering your starting with a pinhead of chemicals and proteins.

 

onto the second part

can't say i've seen any great body of work showing orientation is decided inuetero (hope came close to spelling that). what i have seen is that gender identification starts very early, whether you consider yourself male or female(self -societal acceptance). i'd like to see how they tested fetuses for sexual orientation, perhaps project images from hustler magazine on the inside of the womb to see if male fetuses reacted. sorry being a little silly there.

in the case of the boy 'john' listed in the article it appears he suffered from AIS, or during gestation when androgens (male hormones) should have caused his gonad structure to drop to form a penis and testes, the level sufficiently dropped to a point that his body began reshaping his body as if he were female. in his case there was some teste developement, so no ovaries formation only an incomplete formation of rudimentary external female genitalia once levels had dropped. so the presence of testes showed he had already developed some male characteristics, and it was quite possible his body was still capable of producing other male hormones. meaning though surgically altered his body was not truely female, but merely given the external appearence of such to provide a 'john' was a sexual identification. do not know current thinking but formerly indeterminate or partial males where surgically altered to female, as the belief was as he would be thought to be lacking now in the ability to produce male testosterone his developement would be more along female lines. however the article says the introduction of female hormones did not occur till early teens by which time his emotional makeup would already have been set. and the fact that they were giving him doses of estrogene tend to indicate to me that he was not naturally producing such at any relevant level. and in all likelihood his body had been producing male hormones at a reduced level, meaning he was physically altered to appear female, he was still developing as a male.

 

mr d

[sunspot]

That is a good example, where the sex organs did not develop for the male yet he continued to be male. If this precusor guaranteed him of seeing himself female all the logic would be in place.

 

Along the lines of homosexuality, the Gay bulls (topman), show all the signs of being male except their preferred mode of pleasure. The gay cows (bottom man) may actually correlate to genetic and/or hormonal levels, since their behavior is fairly consistent across the board.

[scicop]

The idea of a Gay gene is sort of ridiculous. Being gay is a complex behavior with all type of psychological and environmental angles. All the detail that MrD kindly shared with us can not be explained with only one gene. One gene is only one protein. If one said it is caused by a large group or cluster of genes' date=' maybe 10-1000, than it would sound more reasonable and could actually account for every step of the process.

 

On the other hand, if it was a cluster of genes there should be a random distribution of every combination among the gay population.[/quote']

 

Well, if you're drosophila geneticist or a mouse geneticist you may disagree!

There are studies in the fruit fly (drosophila) where modulation of gene expression, either overexpression of an active or dominant negative form (via an enhancer trapping technique), have been shown to precipitate same-sexing behaviors (notice I did not say homosexuality, or desire, as those are human behaviors..you can't ask a fruit fly or mouse if its "gay'" rather, but you can "measure" certain behaviors)

I forgot the gene(s), and I'm too lazy to look it up (I went to that seminar a long time ago), but the genetic manipulation done by the scientist resulted in male fruit-flies parading in lies behind each other (what's called "chaining behaviour" for you fruit fly geneticist) and thier trying to mate with each other and not with the female fruit-flies.

 

In one lecture I went to (and I went to billions of them during grad school), I think by Richard Axel (although I'm unsure and too lazy to do a pub med search) , the speaker showed these mice where he knocked out (or in..i forgot) a gene that increased the sensitivity of male mice to a certain phermone. Such that. when the phermone was sprayed onto a wild-type male cage mate, the genetically modified mouse tried mount (mate) the male mouse (mounting behavior..for the behavioral pharmacologist in here)

 

Now, the study showed the same for female mice as well, so the behavior is not sex dependent, but rather phermone dependent, but it suggest that phermones COULD POSSIBLY, MAYBE, AS OF YET DEFINED, play a role in determining gender orientation (I'm not sure if he published this yet, but the videos he showed were pretty darn funny)

 

but anyway, the point is there are some studies out there that are implicating some genes in same-sex courtship behaviors. Whether it relates to "homosexuality" in humans..well...we'll leave that to the gene linkage/staticians to correlate.

[mattbimbo]

as to your 10% rate (i've seen 5-7%, but no matter), if you check rates for babies born with cleft palettes, or webbed fingers and toes (evolutionary vestage or sign of the devil your choice), or clubbed foot all have rates near or surpassing your 10%.

well i just had a look and this is wrong, the highest i found was 1% for cleft palettes and 0.3% for syndactyly. do you live anywhere near a nuclear power station perhaps?

 

i take it mrD that you have now dropped the early statement

most likely cause: genetic damage- defect in the portion of associated standard preference genetic material, present at time of conception or produced during subsequent genetic replication.

that genetic damage contributes to homosexuality.

[mr d]

hello

 

back, don't go on web on my weekends. to many other things to do.

i'll reinvestigate various birth defeats levels, could have sworn that was higher. prehaps based on old data, like i said my idea is old and haven't really spent a lot of time recently working on it. so i'll work based on your numbers for now.

as to the statement of damaged material, that is inreference to cause for genetic damage, not cause of homosexuality.

explaination: main reason for preference is conjectored as blending of parental genetic material influenced by homones\naturally produced chemicals. damaged material refers to damage occuring to those specific section(s) of genetic material responcilbe for original blending, and\or damage to section(s) responcible for production of hormones\chemicals used. and put foreward that this is most likely a resault of genetic damage\mutations\ or simple reproductive action of cell(s) involved from which the genetic material is taken for the process.

secondly, or granted it maybe primary, is that the genetic viability of the opposite sex parent may show the greater influence than what would be generally assigned.

now it maybe that these properties happening at the time of preference selection may also be influenced by other developement activities occuring elsewhere. or that (wild) for example, say your nose is being formed at the same time your preference is decided. however certain chemicals needed for that growth could interfer or inhibit chemicals needed in preference selection. or that previous stages during which chemicals\hormones or created could still be present affecting preference blending.

with allowance being set for possiblity of external influences causing direct damage to genetic material (such as the effects of drugs on fetal developement), or drugs\disease\ or emotional distress causing chemical\hormone changes effecting infants in early developement stages. far less likely but there must be some chance of being a factor.

so that end preference can be influenced by possibly a large number of factors. exceptable in that it does not effect the process enough to supply risk of species reproduction. plus it would have to be considered that other properties inherent in the species may offset rate of preference occurances.

a crude example here. after wwii, during which a larger portion of males in the age for species breeding where killed, there was still a boom in number of childbirths. reason, availablity of female breeding partners, and willlingness of males to engage in breeding activities with available females.

if you have five females and males in whom a certain degree of non-monogomy is genetically inherent you could still produce five children. hey that's may excuse anyway (can't help it it's genetic).

as i said crude, but i think it gets across the idea that other factors may offset birthrates that would result from preference, negating it as a factors in species reproduction rates.

 

as i said before i was surprised that there is still such interest in this subject, so was wondering if you and others who read this post would care to state your reason for continuing interest in subject matter? are you working on your own conjector?

 

mr d

[mr d]

hello

 

due to work plans i shall not be able to visit sfn much for a good long while. so affraid won't be able to continue this discussion. though i'd like to thank all for their replies.

 

hope to return sometime.

 

mr d

[mr d]

hello

 

ok had to drop by quickly to paste this. could be of interest to some.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060509/ap_on_sc/lesbian_brains;_ylt=AiscMWryW.hMRIY7LMkOPQas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MzV0MTdmBHNlYwM3NTM-

 

think its works somewhat into the idea

 

mr d

[mr d]

hello

 

dropping by again to put this link up also. not directly on topic, but about sexual desire, and how variations in certain genes seem to cause variations in levels of desire. all part of ther sliders theory.

 

hope to spend some time back here soon

 

strange thoughts mr d

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060529/sc_space/studysexualdesireisinyourgenes;_ylt=Aiu13mQ440K2JDU6GQV_5OWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-