Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] For Fruit Flies, Gene Shift Tilts Sex Orientation

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Jonathan King wrote:

> This is important...but things are more complicated than that.  For 
> starters, sex determination in mammals including humans works in a very 
> different way; there's no guarantee that you'll have a genetic pathway 
> as clean as the one you get in fruitflies.

Of course - to clarify my meaning:  I wrote, "the findings should have 
implications for how we think about sexuality in every animal species" not 
because I think that other species will be just like the fly.  The 
implication is that major shifts in sexual behavior can be produced by a 
single gene change.  In humans, we don't know why some people are 
homosexual, but research like that just reported in flies gives us all the 
more reason to think in terms of biology and neural wiring instead of in 
terms of "choice" or "agency."


> Further, while there is pretty clearly a sizable genetic contribution to 
> sexual identity in humans, humans and their sex lives are *way* more 
> complex than what you see in a fruitfly.

We have sexual morphology and sexual orientation in both species, but we 
only have sexual identity in humans because flies can't tell us which sex 
they feel they are!  But how far is this new finding pushing into the 
domain of sexual identity?  If we truly see a male brain in a female body 
(albeit Drosophila melanogaster instead of Homo sapiens), isn't that just 
what transexuals often claim?


> And more strikingly, this paper comes on the heels of others that show 
> you can get some degree of "masculinization" of fruitfly behavior 
> through genetic pathways that don't have anything much to do with the 
> "fruitless" gene...I could go on, but only Mike Miller is reading this 
> far, so I won't. :-)
>
> Gosh; if that made sense, then I'm pretty proud of myself. :-)

It was great!

Mike
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