Gene makes fruit flies bisexual: study

[Squirt]

BY JIM RITTER Health Reporter jritter@suntimes.com December 10, 2007


A new study is providing insights into the genetics of homosexuality -- at least in fruit flies.

Researchers have discovered a gene involved in homosexual behavior in the tiny flies. They also found a way to turn homosexuality on and off with drugs.

Humans have a similar gene. But it's unclear what effect, if any, the gene has on homosexual behavior in people, said biologist David Featherstone of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Featherstone and colleagues described their findings in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

After a century of study on fruit flies, researchers have accumulated a vast storehouse of genetic knowledge. UIC researchers were using fruit flies to study muscular dystrophy when they discovered a gene they call "gender blind," or GB.

Flies with a mutated form of the GB gene are bisexual. It appears they're unable to distinguish chemical smells, called pheromones, that tell whether other flies are male or female.

"The GB mutant males treated other males exactly the same way normal male flies would treat a female," Featherstone said. "They even attempted copulation."

The GB mutation appears to strengthen nerve cell junctions called synapses. This causes flies to over-react to pheromones. As a result, they "broaden their horizons and go for both males and females," Featherstone said.

Researchers tested this idea by adding a drug to the flies' apple juice. The drug weakened the synapses. So within a few hours, flies with the GB mutation stopped engaging in homosexual behavior.

Conversely, researchers gave heterosexual male flies a drug that strengthened their synapses. Sure enough, these male flies soon were courting males as well as females.

"It was amazing," Featherstone said. "I never thought we'd be able to do that sort of thing, because sexual orientation is supposed to be hard-wired. This fundamentally changes how we think about this behavior."

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So a new gene has been found that creates bisexuality in fruit flies, and can be controlled by drugs. Would you take a drug to become straight? Do you think such a drug would make you boring or start to like things you never took interest in before (other then vagina)?

[Lee]

Interesting stuff for sure.

Regards,

Lee

[cbl_chaz]

That's great news for the fruit flies! Now they can take drugs and bang whomever they want whenever and blame it on their "synapses". Let's hope this one never makes to human level. Quite frankly I'm not interested in taking drugs to alter what nature has intended for me. I've also been the "first gay experience" for enough curious heterosexual males in my lifetime. Can you imagine if this drug hit the internet like Viagra and Cialis? I can see it now....take the drug, go out and screw your brains out with everyone, male and female alike, and wake up the next day "straight" again? Can't we spend our researcher's time and money on more USEFUL endeavors? Whatever happened to the Muscular Dystrophy research they originally started a CENTURY ago? Leave me gay and fight the REAL diseases please!

[Squirt]

Can you imagine if this drug hit the internet like Viagra and Cialis? I can see it now....take the drug, go out and screw your brains out with everyone, male and female alike, and wake up the next day "straight" again? Can't we spend our researcher's time and money on more USEFUL endeavors? Whatever happened to the Muscular Dystrophy research they originally started a CENTURY ago? Leave me gay and fight the REAL diseases please!

LOL I thought the same thing about the drug being used on people to alter their sexuality but OF COURSE , it never would be released. A drug to make straight men bisexual? NEVER, but a drug to make Gay men straight, in an instant! and they'd charge and arm and a leg for it, and those who didn't take it would be admonished for continuing to be Gay even though they have the option to be like everyone else

I do find all this Gay research interesting, and I'm glad they're doing it. Research is our only option to prove that we don't choose to be different, and that we aren't evil, we're simply blessed genetically. It would be odd if they found all the genes, and tried making a cure... twilight zone, or maybe not.