From the Globe and Mail:
The making of a gay worm
JULIE STEENHUYSEN - Reuters
October 25, 2007 at 9:47 PM EDT
CHICAGO — Altering a gene in the brain of female worms changed their sexual orientation, U.S. researchers said on Thursday, making female worms attracted to other females.
The study reinforces the notion that sexual orientation is hard-wired in the brain, said Erik Jorgensen, scientific director of the Brain Institute at the University of Utah.
"They look like girls, but act and think like boys," Utah researcher Jamie White, who worked on the study published in the journal Current Biology, said in a statement.
Researchers in Dr. Jorgensen's lab switched on a gene in female worms that makes the body develop male structures, but they only activated the gene in the brain.
As a result, the female worms still had female bodies, but they behaved like males.
"It suggests sexual behaviour is encoded in our genes" and not caused by extra nerve cells specific to males or females, Dr. Jorgensen said in a telephone interview.
Now if we could just get that gene zapped in Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Matthew McConaughey we'd be doin' great . . . .
4 comments:
Then you have to do it to Angie if you're going to do Brad :)
Oh, OK - Forgot the girls, didn't I?
I'm sure there may be other suggestions, too . . . .
And to think of it.....
The work was done in Utah, of all places.
How long will it be before all funding for sexual identity research in round worms is banned?
No doubt the round worm research ban is next on the list after fetal stem cells . . . . :)
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