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Genes play a role in—but cannot alone predict—same-sex sexual behaviors, according to a study published today (August 29) in Science. Using genetic data from nearly half a million participants who consented to be surveyed about their sexual experiences, the authors find that at most, genetics accounts for 8–25 percent of the variation in sexual behaviors and only some of the genes involved are shared between men and women.
“The strength of the paper is that it used a very large dataset,” says Jacqueline Vink, a behavioral geneticist at Radbound University who was not part of the study but has worked with some of the researchers before. The methods allowed the researchers to “find novel genes associated with same-sex sexual behavior and learn more about possible biological pathways.”
Joel Gelernter, a psychiatrist and geneticist at the Yale School of Medicine who was not involved in the study, ...
