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July 19, 2005

A gay lion, a gay giraffe, and even a gaggle of gay geese

Scientists are working on a gene that, when modified, turns animals gay. The always-PC NY Times managed to tap dance around that issue.

The male mouse's rule for dealing with strangers is simple - if it's male, attack it; if female, mate with it. But male mice that are genetically engineered to block the scent-detecting vomeronasal cells try to mate rather than attack invading males.

Then there's the ever-popular fruit fly:

Last month Barry J. Dickson of the Austrian Academy of Sciences provided an elegant proof of this idea by genetically engineering male flies to make the female version of the fruitless protein, and female flies to generate the male version. The male flies barely courted at all. But the female flies with the male form of fruitless aggressively pursued other females, performing all steps of male courtship except the last.

Among the various studies reported, perhaps the one that made the most sense was this:

A remarkable instance of genome-environment interaction has been discovered in the maternal behavior of rats. Pups that receive lots of licking and grooming from their mothers during the first week of life are less fearful in adulthood and more phlegmatic [fearful or cowardly] in response to stress than are pups that get less personal care.

Last year, Michael J. Meaney and colleagues at McGill University in Montreal reported that a gene in the brain of the well-groomed pups is chemically modified during the grooming period and remains so throughout life. The modification makes the gene produce more of a product that damps down the brain's stress response.

The system would allow the laid-back rats to transmit their behavior to their pups through the same good-grooming procedure, just as the stressed-out rat mothers transmit their fearfulness to their offspring.

"Among mammals," Dr. Meaney and colleagues wrote in a report of their findings last year, "natural selection may have shaped offspring to respond to subtle variations in parental behavior as a forecast of the environmental conditions they will ultimately face once they become independent of the parent."

I'll think of this next time I watch the rats scurry about the 125th St. subway stop. My only remaining question is how to measure phlegmaticness among rats?

Posted by adrianjo at July 19, 2005 12:34 AM

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