PIXABAY, KAZBy examining just a handful of sites along the genome and determining whether they are methylated, scientists can peg sexual orientation with nearly 70 percent accuracy. That’s according to data presented today (October 8) at the American Society of Human Genetics meeting.
“People have been looking for gay genes for 20 years and haven’t been really able to identify them, in spite of the fact that there’s interest,” Sergey Gavrilets, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville who was not involved in the study, told BuzzFeed News. “The existing evidence that we have now does point very strongly towards the significant role of epigenetics in homosexual orientation.”
Gavrilets and a pair of colleagues proposed the idea of epigenetics influencing sexual orientation several years ago. In the latest work, Eric Vilain, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, postdoc Tuk Ngun, and their colleagues scanned through the genomes of 47 male twin pairs. In 37 pairs, one of the brothers was ...
