by Digs » Thu Jul 21, 2011 3:25 am
Especially given our huge genome sequencing ability nowadays, there's no reason to think that there's anything like a 'gay gene;' rather, there should instead be numerous hotspots scattered throughout the genome that act like 'risk factors' for homosexuality, just like there are 'risk factors' for schizophrenia, Crohn's disease, and tallness. Your environment will of course have an impact and interact with your specific genotype to produce an emergent sexual orientation. People with more genetic 'risk' for homosexuality should be more predisposed to being homosexual, just like 'risk' for height are predisposed to tallness. All you'd have to do, if this is the case, is gather a bunch (tens of thousands) of DNA samples and look for gene variants and sites in the genome that are found predominantly in either hetero- or homosexuals and, boom: pieces of the 'gay gene.' But, since it's not really a pressing issue, we'd have to wait a few years for the price of sequencing to go down enough to make the research fundable. It'd really be neat to see what genes and regulators are involved, though, to have a mechanistic understanding of how the two different orientations are biologically wired.
Especially given our huge genome sequencing ability nowadays, there's no reason to think that there's anything like a 'gay gene;' rather, there should instead be numerous hotspots scattered throughout the genome that act like 'risk factors' for homosexuality, just like there are 'risk factors' for schizophrenia, Crohn's disease, and tallness. Your environment will of course have an impact and interact with your specific genotype to produce an emergent sexual orientation. People with more genetic 'risk' for homosexuality should be more predisposed to being homosexual, just like 'risk' for height are predisposed to tallness. All you'd have to do, if this is the case, is gather a bunch (tens of thousands) of DNA samples and look for gene variants and sites in the genome that are found predominantly in either hetero- or homosexuals and, boom: pieces of the 'gay gene.' But, since it's not really a pressing issue, we'd have to wait a few years for the price of sequencing to go down enough to make the research fundable. It'd really be neat to see what genes and regulators are involved, though, to have a mechanistic understanding of how the two different orientations are biologically wired.