Inducing transgenderism in fruit fly brains

[Mayabird]

Flies get 'mind-control sex swap'
By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News


Scientists have been able to take control of flies' brains to make females behave just like males.

Researchers genetically modified the insects so that a group of brain cells that control sexual behaviour could be "switched on" by a pulse of light.

The team was able to get female fruit flies to produce a courtship song - behaviour usually only seen in males.

The study, published in the journal Cell, suggests that the wiring in male and female flies' brains is similar.


Gero Miesenboeck, from Oxford University, UK, who carried out the research with J. Dylan Clyne from Yale University, US, said: "It is often the case that males have to work very hard to convince females to mate with them.

"In many animal species, males have to put on elaborate courtship displays to impress females - even the tiny fruit fly."

Male fruit flies will vibrate one of their wings to produce a barely audible song, explained Professor Miesenboeck.

"And if the female likes that sound, she'll surrender to his advances."

Previous research has revealed that a group of 2,000 brain cells are necessary for this courtship behaviour in the insects; however, both male and female fruit flies appear to possess most of these neurons.

Professor Miesenboeck said: "It looks like males and females have very similar neuronal equipment, yet they behave so differently - only the male sings, and only the female responds to the song by allowing a male to copulate with her.

"The big question is: why - what is the difference?"

To investigate, the team placed some flies in a "mini sound studio".

The insects had been genetically modified so that a pulse of light would activate this group of courtship neurons.


What happened when scientists took over the flies' brains?

First of all, the researchers looked at male flies and found that the light would indeed spark a song.

"The second, more exciting question we wanted to ask, was what would happen if we turned the neurons on in females.

"Females don't normally show this kind of behaviour, but we wanted to find out if they had a hidden capacity to do it," explained Professor Miesenboeck.

As the light pulsed through the chamber, video footage shows the female fruit fly lifting and vibrating one of her wings to produce a song.

The next stage was to find out how effective the artificially induced songs were as mating calls.

For this, the "Cyrano de Bergerac" test was applied.


The 'Cyrano de Bergerac' test: how alluring is the song?

A male and female fly were placed in the sound studio. The male fly had had his wings altered so that he could not produce any sound.

The mute couple were then played the recorded courtship songs produced by the mind-controlled male and female flies.

"The artificially activated male songs proved seductive," Professor Miesenboeck told the BBC News.

Experimental set up for flies (Miesenbock)
The flies were places in a mini sound studio

However, the music produced by the female did little to get the mute flies in the mood for mating.

Professor Miesenboeck explained: "When we analysed the songs, we found there were subtle differences between the male song and the artificially induced female song - the pitch was a bit off, the rhythm was off, the song, overall, was less well controlled."

Nevertheless, the researchers say the study reveals that male and female brains are extremely similar in flies - even the circuits thought to be dedicated to sexual behaviours such as courtship.

The next question to answer, said Professor Miesenboeck, was if both males and females had the capacity to create courtship songs, why was it that only the males did so under normal circumstances?

He said he thought there might be a handful of "master switches" or "command centres" in the flies' brains that were set to male or female mode.

"Our next goal is to find these switches," he added.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7350403.stm

[Patrick Degan]

I know this is important, valid research. But reading this article, I couldn't help getting a mental picture of some fruit-fly researcher somewhere chuckling evilly to himself while conducting his tests as a thunderstorm rages outside the lab.

[Singular Intellect]

Finally, scientific research all the fundies can pour their support and funding into.

After all, what better way to fight the spread of evil homosexuality! Just change them with the Lord's almighty science!

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Finally, scientific research all the fundies can pour their support and funding into.

After all, what better way to fight the spread of evil homosexuality! Just change them with the Lord's almighty science!

This has nothing to do with homosexuality whatsoever, wiseass. You might have tried reading the title before posting?


There's no way this could lead to a "cure" of transsexualism either, without some very significant scientific advances. There is a huge difference between manipulating genes and breeding these fruit flies specifically so that a light pulse can activate a certain group of genes, and being able to cure even an embryo, certainly not an adult. Transexualism is so fundamental to the personality of an individual that a cure would be immoral because it would destroy their personality and leave another individual in their place only coincidentally related to them. It may, in the future, be screened, detected, and treated some fashion at the embryonic level; but likely as not through a rather different method than what is described here.

Bringing up homosexuality is, frankly, quite offensive in this context, and shows tremendous ignorance.

[Singular Intellect]

I take it my mocking humor of how a religious idiot might interpret this research was lost on you?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I take it my mocking humor of how a religious idiot might interpret this research was lost on you?

I knew what it was, it was just damned inappropriate.

[Singular Intellect]

I take it my mocking humor of how a religious idiot might interpret this research was lost on you?

I knew what it was, it was just damned inappropriate.

*shrugs* It wasn't intented to offend anyone, it was an attempt at humor in a thread where it doesn't seem there would be much discussion to begin with other than "cool", "awesome" and "yay".

Given you took offence, I'll apologize, but I don't honestly understand why you did.

[Tolya]

So, basically. by making female flies attractive to female flies...

They created fly lesbians. Sort of.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

So, basically. by making female flies attractive to female flies...

They created fly lesbians. Sort of.

No, that is completely wrong. They made female flies behave like males. Lesbians do not behave like males. Again, this research has nothing to do with homosexuality.

[Oskuro]

I know the research has nothing to do with homosexuality, but I couldn't help but think of Lusankya's "Zap! Now you're gay!" avatar

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I know the research has nothing to do with homosexuality, but I couldn't help but think of Lusankya's "Zap! Now you're gay!" avatar :roll:

Eh, I'm not surprised people have that perception. Just, like Durandal, nothing has ever irritated me more than people making gadfly one-liners on serious topics in SLAM that just tend to represent their ignorance and lack of reading comprehension.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

No, that is completely wrong. They made female flies behave like males. Lesbians do not behave like males. Again, this research has nothing to do with homosexuality.

You have to admit though, the sterotypical bull dyke is often protrayed as somewhere between your sterotypical lumberjack and hell's-angel style biker.


Still yes, it does relay a fair bit of miscomprehension. It only says that teh females produced a song. And that later that song proved effective for prompting another set of wingless flies to mate... I don't see anything about the courtship targets of these altered females.

Although given the tactics presented in the flies mate selection... it's not a terribly obscure conclusion that the females go to the ones doing the "singing" to mate, and thusly these altered females would get a number of expectant arrivals if such happened in the wild.

It actually makes me wonder why they didn't go that route. And see what would happen between an unaltered female and one of these altered ones... Though, it is entirely possible that this behavior and the actual mating process are not linked.

[Oskuro]

Eh, I'm not surprised people have that perception. Just, like Durandal, nothing has ever irritated me more than people making gadfly one-liners on serious topics in SLAM that just tend to represent their ignorance and lack of reading comprehension.

And nothing irritates me more than people who are too uptight to take lighthearted comments for what they are. I'm not trying to offend you, or anyone else, so sorry to say this, but if you take offense, it's your problem.


And about my lack of reading comprehension, what I gather is that the whole experiment is just triggering a pre-coded sexual mechanism on the flies. The genetic tampering is just to have certain light signals be the trigger, but the genetic information for the "singing" is already there.

In other words, is like a guy taking hormones and growing breasts. We already have that information on our genes, and just need to trigger it. The experiment with the flies would be analogous to breeding humans to grow breasts while sunbathing.

So, in other words, yes, it is a transgenderism experiment, in the sense that it activates secondary sexual factors of the flies that do not match their actual gender. Nothing else actually.

[Tolya]

And nothing irritates me more than people who are too uptight to take lighthearted comments for what they are. I'm not trying to offend you, or anyone else, so sorry to say this, but if you take offense, it's your problem.


And about my lack of reading comprehension, what I gather is that the whole experiment is just triggering a pre-coded sexual mechanism on the flies. The genetic tampering is just to have certain light signals be the trigger, but the genetic information for the "singing" is already there.

In other words, is like a guy taking hormones and growing breasts. We already have that information on our genes, and just need to trigger it. The experiment with the flies would be analogous to breeding humans to grow breasts while sunbathing.

So, in other words, yes, it is a transgenderism experiment, in the sense that it activates secondary sexual factors of the flies that do not match their actual gender. Nothing else actually.

Congratulations, you passed the reading comprehension test

Actually, I believe that the "lack of reading comprehension" comment was directed towards me. But you beat me to posting a good response.

Duchess, lighten up for flies sake. Those were jokes. Maybe not very good and succesful, but jokes nevertheless.

I know this topic is important and thats real science at work but c'mon... there is a disturbing word in the phrase "DEAD serious".

[Mayabird]

It's an issue that's very important to her, and there are a LOT of misconceptions about it which have to be corrected, and frankly, jokes that perpetrate the misconceptions don't help at all. Heck, that's mostly why I posted the article in the first place.

[Tolya]

Im sorry Marina, I did not mean to offend you in any way.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Im sorry Marina, I did not mean to offend you in any way.

No problem. It just irritatingly reminds me of a bunch of patronizing gay guys asking "why are you doing that to yourself, honey?"

The difference between sex based behaviour and sexual attraction is so extreme that I can't emphasize enough how completely simply wrong the comments are. People may have felt they were being funny, but it was really like posting in a thread about the US elections in Pennsylvania about your favourite bar in Wichita, Kansas.

[Oskuro]

But it is a thread about transgendering FRUIT FLIES with the power of LIGHT!

I know transgender issues are a sensitive subject for you, Duchess, but you have to admit the thread is very conducive to humor and silly jokes.

And yes, many jokes will hinge on stupid stereotypes. I don't think anyone has a problem with jokes about how men are sex-centric infantile freaks, right? Unless the joke is clearly meant to cause harm, let's not take them too seriously, or else we won't be able to laugh at virtually anything.... and that'd be boring.

On my part, there was no harm intended at all.

[sketerpot]

Studies like this just keep adding more evidence that gender identity is very heavily biological -- as opposed to the mishmash of vaguely Freudian crap that seems to be the widespread popular theory.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find much good information on what exactly does causes gender dysphoria in humans. Could someone who's studied this help me out?