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re: One step closer to tying homosexuality to the human genome

Posted on 11/20/14 at 10:15 am to
Posted by onmymedicalgrind
Nunya
Member since Dec 2012
10591 posts
Posted on 11/20/14 at 10:15 am to
quote:

This is what's confusing. How do you know if you're "one step closer" if you haven't found what you're looking for?

What you have to realize is "a gene" for something as complex as sexual preference will likely never be found. That's not the way things work. Even for better understood, very heritable pathologies such as diabetes or HTN, there is no single gene implicated. Heritability is the more interesting subject here, and evidence of such supports the theory that sexual preference is somewhere in the DNA (whether specific sequence, alleles, epigenetic factors, etc) even if those specific mechanisms are never completely elucidated.
Posted by GumboPot
Member since Mar 2009
119031 posts
Posted on 11/20/14 at 10:22 am to
IMO there not a "gay gene". More than likely gayness is linked to a combination of genes that initiate the production or inhibition of particular hormones and their concentrations during critical phases of human sexual development. Once someone is past these critical phases of sexual development their sexual orientation is set in stone.
Posted by AbuTheMonkey
Chicago, IL
Member since May 2014
8020 posts
Posted on 11/20/14 at 10:51 am to
quote:

What you have to realize is "a gene" for something as complex as sexual preference will likely never be found. That's not the way things work. Even for better understood, very heritable pathologies such as diabetes or HTN, there is no single gene implicated. Heritability is the more interesting subject here, and evidence of such supports the theory that sexual preference is somewhere in the DNA (whether specific sequence, alleles, epigenetic factors, etc) even if those specific mechanisms are never completely elucidated.


That's my take as well. Even something as simple as eye color turned out to be far more complex than simple genetic expression. Has anyone looked into fetal hormone levels? Just off intuition and from what I remember from studying, that seems like a logical place to start.

Delicately, I'll step in and say there might be some early (like before you turn four or five years old) childhood experiences involved - not implying sexual abuse or anything like that, just some sociological dominance and submissive dynamics involved. Wouldn't that seem to explain the phenomenon of younger brothers having a much higher likelihood of being homosexual than older brothers?
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