Is Being Gay In Your DNA? Science Seeks an Answer

Newsweek reports:

A new study in a major journal has found a weak association between several genes and sexual orientation. However, that doesn’t mean that science has identified a “gay gene” or anything like it—and some scientists have cautioned against overinterpreting the findings.

Regions on two chromosomes seemed to differ the most between people who identified as gay and those who identified as straight, according to a study published in Scientific Reports on Thursday. This is the first time an analysis, known as a genome-wide association study, on this topic has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. However, on the whole, the genomes of gay and straight men were not significantly different.

“We know that sexual orientation has some hereditary or genetic contributions,” Dr. Alan Sanders, a psychiatrist at NorthShore University HealthSystem Research Institute and an author of the paper, told Newsweek. “A common scenario in this kind of research is that you’ll hear people use a sort of shorthand like ‘the gay gene,’ which is not really accurate at all."

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