Formerly Titled "Making Lebanese Fruit Flies"
Nature or Nurture?
Scientists are hard at work.
For Fruit Flies, Gene Shift Tilts Sex Orientation
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: June 3, 2005
International Herald Tribune
When 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 - all part of standard fruit fly seduction.
The observing scientist looked with disbelief at the show, for the suitor in this case was not a male, but a female that researchers had artificially endowed with a single male-type gene.
The rest below the fold
That one gene, the researchers are announcing today 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 sexual attention to other males.
"We have shown that a single gene in the fruit fly is sufficient to determine all aspects of the flies' sexual orientation and behavior," said the paper's lead author, Dr. Barry Dickson, senior scientist at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. "It's very surprising.
"What it tells 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 orientation, although it is not clear now if there is a similar master sexual gene for humans.
The complete story from the New York Times can be found here.
When do you think they'll start looking for the fashion gene in humans? If they find that gene, do you think they'll test for it in all of our military personnel and then evict the ones that have it?