Could My Great Grandfather Be Gay?

I chanced upon an article in the International Herald Tribune at a house of one of my interviewees. Call it divine intervention to hasten my acceptance (yes, I'm still overwhelmed) of my recent coming out. But the article (posted below for your reference) points out that homosexuality (or heterosexuality) may be dictated by a gene. That it is largely inherent more than a product of acceptance. In the study, a female fruitfly was artificially endowed with a single male-type gene. Soon after, the female fruitfly exhibited male characteristics. As the article points out, this discovery puts the debate out of the realm of morality and into science.

If someone's gay, blame the genes.

A single gene answers question of sex
By Elisabeth Rosenthal International Herald Tribune

FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 2005When the genetically altered fruit fly was released into the observation chamber, it did what these breeders-par-excellence tend to do: It pursued a waiting virgin female.

It gently tapped the girl with its leg, played her a song (using wings as instruments) and, only then, dared to lick her genitalia - all part of standard fruit fly seduction.

The observing scientist looked with disbelief at the show, knowing that this was where this courtship ended: The suitor in this case was not a male, but a female that researchers had artificially endowed with a single male-type gene.

That one gene, the researchers announced in the journal Cell, is apparently by itself enough to create patterns of sexual behavior, a kind of master sexual gene that normally exists in two distinct male and female variants.

In a series of experiments, the researchers found that females given the male variant of the gene acted exactly like males in courtship, madly pursuing other females. Males that were artificially given the female version of the gene became more passive and turned their attention to their own sex.

"We have shown that a single gene in the fruit fly is sufficient to determine all aspects of the flies' sexual orientation and behavior - it's very surprising," said Barry Dickson, senior scientist at the Institute of Molecular Biology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and the paper's lead author.

"What it tell us is that instinctive behaviors can be specified by genetic programs, just like the morphologic development of an organ or a nose."

The results are certain to prove influential in debates about whether genes or environment determine who we are, how we act and, especially, our sexual preference, said experts in the field, who added that they were both awed and shocked by the results.

"The results are so clean and compelling, the whole field of the genetic roots of behavior is moved forward tremendously by this work - that a single gene can generate male behavior in a female fly is really surprising," said Michael Weiss, professor and chairman of biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University in the United States.

"Hopefully this will take the discussion about sexual preferences out of the realm of morality and put it in the realm of science," Weiss said. "I never chose to be heterosexual, it just happened, but humans are complicated.

"With the flies we can see in a simple and elegant way how a gene can influence and determine behavior."

The results suggest that, in terms of sexuality and sexual preference at least, genes exert a powerful influence.

That supports scientific evidence accumulating for the past decade that a sexual preference may be innately programmed into the brains of men and women - straight or gay.

Equally intriguing, the researchers say, is the possibility that a number of behaviors - hitting back when feeling threatened, fleeing when scared or laughing when amused - may also be programmed into human brains, a product of genetic heritage.

"This is a first - a superb demonstration that a single gene can serve as a switch for complex behaviors," said Gero Miesenboeck, a professor of cell biology at Yale University.

Dickson, who recalls running into the lab when an assistant called him on a Sunday night with the results, said, "This really makes you think about how much of our behavior, perhaps especially sexual behaviors, has a strong genetic component."

All researchers cautioned that any of these prewired behaviors set by master genes can and probably will be modified by experience. Though male fruit flies are programmed to "do it," Dickson said, "males that are rejected often by females over time become less aggressive in their mating behavior."

When a normal male fruit fly is introduced to a virgin female, he almost immediately begins foreplay and then copulates for 20 minutes.

In fact, Dickson and his co-author, Ebru Demir of the Institute of Molecular Biology, chose to look for the genetic basis of fly sexual behavior precisely because it seemed so strong and instinctive, therefore predictable.

But no one dreamed that simply activating the normally dormant male portion of the gene in a female fly could cause a genetic female to display so perfectly the whole elaborate panoply of male fruit fly foreplay.