2005
3 June 2005. For
Fruit Flies, Gene Shift Tilts Sex Orientation. By
ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, 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. 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. ...The finding supports
scientific evidence accumulating over the
past decade that sexual orientation may
be innately programmed into the brains of
men and women. 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 Dr. Gero Miesenboeck,
a professor of cell biology at Yale.
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