THE GAY GENE Half of all heterosexuals carry it

THE GAY GENE by ALAN SAMONS Around half of all straight people carry a gay gene.

Could science explain how homosexuality is passed down generations? Why do gay people exist? In a world where a man and a woman are needed to make a baby, scientists have questioned for decades why homosexuality exists in thousands of different species.

New research suggests around half of all people could be genes and heredity on homosexuality, Chaladze tried to find carrying a gay gene, meaning homosexuality is passed out why genes associated with homosexuality don’t die out. As down generations despite the tendency of gay people straight men, unsurprisingly, are far more likely to have children not to have children. than gay men, surely the genes connected with homosexuality

“This has helped homosexuality to be present among humans should eventually become extinct? throughout history and in all cultures, even though homosexual But based on Chaladze’s calculations, published in the men normally do not have many descendants who can directly journal Archives of Sexual Behavior and reported by Science inherit their genes,“ Giorgi Chaladze, of the Ilia State University Daily, male homosexuality is maintained in a population at in Georgia, said. “low and stable frequencies“ if half of the men and roughly

Using a computational model to look at the influence of more than half of the women carry genes that predispose men

to homosexuality.

Chaladze said: “The trend of female family members of homosexual men to have more offspring can help explain the persistence of homosexuality, if we also consider that those males who have such genes are not always homosexuals. The possibility that many heterosexual men are carriers can also explain why estimates of the number of men who have reported any same-sex sexual behaviour and same-sex sexual attraction are much higher than estimates of those who self-identify as homosexual or bisexual.“

And, according to Chaladze, this might explain that nonhomosexual male carriers might sometimes exhibit homosexual behaviour without identifying as gay.

A study by Canadian scientists in 2013 suggested that the number of brothers a man has can increase his likelihood of being gay. The research, led by Anthony Bogaert at Ontario’s Brock University, found that each older brother raises the odds of homosexuality by a up to a third – a gradual increase which may be related to the mother’s changing immune responses to each child.

Recently, scientists were believed to have found genetic indicators of whether someone has same or opposite-sex attraction. The research suggested that genetic code may play a role in determining sexual orientation. The link was discovered when scientists compared the DNA of 47 sets of male twins,

including pairs where the two twins had a different sexual orientation.

Yet another study has suggested that we could be closing in on so-called ’gay genes.’ The genetic analysis of 409 pairs of gay brothers, which included twins, provides the most compelling evidence so far that people are born gay.

The study strengthens theories that two regions, one on the X chromosome and one on chromosome 8, could be linked to sexual orientation in men. It is the largest study of its kind by about three times the numbers of the previous record.

The leader of the study, Alan Sanders, of the NorthShore Research Institute in Evanston, Illinois, said the study counters the idea that sexual orientations can be “cured“ or “treated.“ “It erodes the notion that sexual orientation is a choice,“ says Sanders.

One of the regions, on the X chromosome, called Xq28, was first identified over two decades ago in 1993, by Dean Hamer of the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. This study looked at 409 pairs of gay brothers, and non-identical twins, from 384 families, but Hamer’s 1993 study only looked at 40 pairs of gay brothers. Although Sanders’ work does close in on potentially locking down genes which are linked to sexual orientation, there is much work still to be done.

Finally science is backing up what gay men have said for years – there is never any choice involved.