The (UK) Telegraph reports:
"The simple procedure causes the modified mice to reject the advances of their male counterparts and attempt to mate with fellow females.
"Researchers found that disabling the FucM gene – which influences the levels of oestrogen to which the brain is exposed – caused the mice to behave as if they were male as they grew up.
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"By deleting the enzyme-producing gene, the scientists believe that they caused the female mice to be exposed to extra oestrogen, by preventing their brains from filtering out the hormone.
"While oestrogen masculinises the brain in mice, it does not have the same effect on humans.
"Professor Park now hopes to investigate whether the enzyme produced by the gene – fucose mutarotase – has any influence on human sexuality, but conceded that it may be 'very difficult' to find willing volunteers."
The New Scientist explains in slightly more detail:
"Female mice lacking the gene avoided the advances of males, stopped sniffing male urine and attempted to mate with other females, though their ability to have pups was unaffected. (BMC Genetics, DOI: 10.1186/1471-2156-11-62)."
The report notes that the "hormone masculinises the brain in mice – though not in people."
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Reader's Comments
While it may in fact show a biological root cause for our homosexual nature, it may and will also encourage others to truly seek a "cure".
While I concede that at a point in my life, I would have willingly and gratefully acceped anything that would have made me a heterosexual, today, I am glad that I endured the internal conflict and introspection that led me to accept my gay nature, as it helped build my character and instilled in me a deeper understanding of challenges faced by others in their life, as to that point in my life, I had never experienced any defining form of adversity or challenges, as I grew up in a white middle class American boy in a small town and the world was literally at my feet.
The process of coming out to myself was the most painfully difficult process I can ever expect to endure and it made me who I am today, therefore I would not take a "cure" today and as much as I never wanted to be gay, I am glad that I am, as like all people, I am the sum of my life experiences, good, bad and indifferent and since I like who I am today, I could never go back and change any life events that brought me to where I am.
Geneticists can be the source of great good ( maybe curing diabetes or other diseases) but regrettably can be the cause of great peril in society - always be careful of what you ask for - you might just get it
Can I volunteer to be the first guinea pig??
Or maybe I should start dating mice???????
For so long, people pursuing abortion and artificial insemination/designer-genes babies were accused of "playing God", so i wonder now if the church(es) will "play God" by inserting specially trained doctors into hospitals to interfere with removal of such a gene -- again, if it becomes possible in humans.
Still, this could be one way to reduce the population of stray dogs and cats if it is applicable to them.
The difference would be mice are controlled by instinct, while we are controlled by multiple factors of thought, individuality, instincts and desire. Unlike mice we have a little choice in making the decision to choose to be who we are right?_?
Tell me if it does not make sense....
playing god? not really, i would not say that, until virologists find away to cure HIV (curing, not treating).., or till we can have a pill that can heal everything..
I have always wondered about the validity of the budget for research. Why are we paying for scientists to do research on these when people are dying of cancer, AIDs and there are obviously world leaders who have clinically criminal tendencies?
Science presumes that human beings are driven only by hormones and genes and biochemical impulses. But a human being is more than the sum of its parts. The scientist only studies one minute part of the human being.
I have always believed homosexuality is nature and nurture. There are men and women who are able to suppress and deny their latent homosexual tendencies and live life that way. And there are people who simply cannot.
We are supposed to evolve. In layman science language, that means, the human race must diversify, must accept differences in the gene pool. Otherwise, we become a colony of in-breeders where, because science is able to isolate only a few major genes and hormones and genetic engineering chooses only these available to human knowledge.
What it means is this. When we manipulate genes and hormones and choose to produce a child with only what we know and what we choose, we disallow nature to do its job and eventually that group of people will develop all the diseases and weaknesses in that gene pool and eventually die out. Cos we are making all the same kind of people.
Stuupeed research.
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