News
2006-02-22
Being gay part of
the "X" factor?
New research
suggests that mothers of gay sons share a common trait when
it comes to X chromosomes.
Adding to the
Adding to the
ongoing debate over whether being gay is a choice, new
research released on Tuesday suggests the genetics of
mothers with multiple gay sons are different than
those of other women. The findings looked at 97
mothers of gay sons and 103 mothers without gay sons and
compared how the women processed their extra X chromosome
(women have two X chromosomes but require only one and
routinely inactivate the other). The study found that
almost a quarter of mothers with more than one gay son
processed X chromosomes in the same way.
The research
“confirms that there is a strong genetic basis for
sexual orientation and that for some gay men, genes on
the X chromosome are involved,” study coauthor
Sven Bocklandt, a postdoctoral researcher at the
University of California, Los Angeles, told the HealthDay
Reporter. “When we looked at women who have
gay kids, in those with more than one gay son, we saw a
quarter of them inactivate the same X in virtually
every cell we checked. That’s extremely
unusual.”
Most women
inactivate their extra X chromosomes at random, and the
phenomenon of being more likely to inactivate one specific X
chromosome—like the mothers of multiple gay sons
did—is typically seen only in families with
genetic irregularities.
Other scientists
were more skeptical of what the study proved. Dr. Ionel
Sandovici, a genetics researcher at the Babraham Institute
in Cambridge, England, described the study as small
and pointed out that most of the mothers of multiple
gay sons didn’t share the unusual X-chromosome trait.
The origins of sexual orientation remain “rather a
complicated biological puzzle,” Sandovici said.
(Advocate.com)
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