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Asked by anon-254954 on 18 May 2020.
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Alex Holmes answered on 18 May 2020:
Hi, interesting question.
There’s no gene for specific sexualities, and we’re not really sure what makes one person like a particular gender. Sexuality is really complicated, it can’t really be summed up by saying it’s to do with genetics or life experiences or your personality or psychology.
It’s also really difficult to study these things because of the ethics involved. I’m not sure I would want to find out why I’m bisexual for instance, because what would people do with that information? There’s already a lot of stigma about sexualities other than heterosexual, so there’s a lot of risk that data saying it’s this gene or life experience or whatever would make people want to make sure their children don’t have it and have a negative impact on society. Then again, maybe it would make more people believe that sexuality is real and not just “a phase”.
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Chris Watt answered on 18 May 2020:
Hi LestynS. We have some traits which are decided by our DNA – such as eye colour and which blood group we are. However, most traits are decided by a range of factors, such as our DNA, our experiences growing up, the environment we live in, and our behaviours. Examples of these are: how much we weigh, how tall we are, and what our IQ is. As Alexandra says, sexuality is very complex and is probably a result of lots of different factors. The most important thing to know is that the interplay between nature and nurture makes us all unique – something we should celebrate!
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Alena Pance answered on 19 May 2020:
Hi Lestyn, yes is the short answer. We are diploid, which means we have two of every chromosome (the structures in which DNA is organised in the nucleus of every cell), one comes from dad and the other from mum. This is why we generally have features from each one of our parents. While every pair of chromosomes has the same information, just one is characteristic of mum and the other of dad, one pair of the chromosomes is different men have 1 chromosome X and one Y and women have two chromosomes X. Because everyone of us gets one set of chromosomes from each parent, we always get a chromosome X from mum but we can get either a chromosome X or a Y from dad and depending on which we got, we become a girl or a boy.
Comments
Roberta commented on :
Hi lestynS thanks for such an interesting question! So far scientists have not identified a specific gene or DNA sequence which correlates with people’s sexuality, even when thousands of human genomes were compared! Scientists think that 1) sexuality, just like any other behaviour trait may be polygenic that is influenced by different genes at the same time and all these genes may be in turn influenced by the environment; 2)alternatively another hypothesis is that there is not gene-sexuality correlation at all. This ultimately means, there may be nothing written in our genetic code which determines our preferences and if there was something would probably too difficult (and maybe not of much use) to find out about it. I hope it helps 🙂 Stay well ,Roberta