The Science of Gaydar

[piercehawkeye45]

Genetics don't just work with the stereotypical Mendel dominant-recessive gene combination (AA, Aa, aa).

Pure altruism is probably a very complex dominant-recessive combination that is so ingrained in that bird's population that it will not go away even when the altruistic gene is initiated, that individual will not produce offspring.

There are lizards that when the fetus is still growing in the egg, the sex is determined by the temperature of the egg. If the egg temperature is above a certain threshold, it will become female, below, a male. That means that a trait can pop up at any time no matter if that trait will cause the individual to produce children or not.

Down Syndrome is when the 23rd allele (I think that is what it is) is copied twice so they have one extra allele than normal. Most people with Down Syndrome do not procreate and the gene still shows up.

If homosexuality is genetic or influenced by genetics, then it would most likely be under one of those three categories or something that I haven't thought of, not a simple Mendel equation.

[LabRat]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Down Syndrome is when the 23rd allele (I think that is what it is) is copied twice so they have one extra allele than normal. Most people with Down Syndrome do not procreate and the gene still shows up.
.

Please, stop murdering your biology. It breaks my heart. We should all have 2 alleles of every gene in our DNA. One from mom, one from pop.

Down syndrome is known as Trisomy 21, becasue it is a result of the indivdual having part or all of the 21st chromosome in triplicate, not duplicate as in a typical individual. As women age, the last cell division in meiosis becomes more likely to have errors, thus we see an increased incidence of Down's babies born to older mothers. Trisomy occurs for all of our chromosomes, however for most it is a fatal mistake and the fetus dies. Men don't have this problem, because they are continually making brand spanking new sperm every day. A woman is born with the finite number of eggs that she will have for her lifetime.