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The findings were published Thursday in Science. The rest was presumably a result of environmental or other biological influences. When the researchers looked at the overall genetic similarity of individuals who had had a same-sex experience, genetics seemed to account for between 8 and 25 percent of the behavior. But taken together, these five markers explained less than 1 percent of the differences in sexual activity among people in the study. Two of these genetic markers sit close to genes linked to sex hormones and to smell-both factors that may play a role in sexual attraction.
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The researchers found five single points in the genome that seemed to be common among people who had had at least one same-sex experience. They asked more than 477,000 participants whether they had ever had sex with someone of the same sex, and also questions about sexual fantasies and the degree to which they identified as gay or straight. In the new study, a team led by Brendan Zietsch of the University of Queensland, Australia, mined several massive genome data banks, including that of 23andMe and the UK Biobank (23andMe did not fund the research). Other studies have linked sexual orientation with environmental factors such as hormone exposure before birth and having older brothers. The handful of genetic studies conducted in the past few decades have looked at only a few hundred individuals at most-and almost exclusively men. “The message should remain the same that this is a complex behavior that genetics definitely plays a part in,” said study co-author Fah Sathirapongsasuti, a computational biologist at genetic testing company 23andMe in Mountain View, Calif., during a press conference. Yet some researchers question whether the analysis, which looked at genes associated with sexual activity rather than attraction, can draw any real conclusions about sexual orientation. The analysis, which examined the genomes of nearly half a million men and women, found that although genetics are certainly involved in who people choose to have sex with, there are no specific genetic predictors. Now, a new study claims to dispel the notion that a single gene or handful of genes make a person prone to same-sex behavior. Yet some fear that such a finding could be misused “cure” homosexuality, and most research teams have shied away from tackling the topic. A clear genetic link would suggest that gay people are “born this way,” as opposed to having made a lifestyle choice. Few aspects of human biology are as complex-or politically fraught-as sexual orientation.