Everything about Fruitless Gene totally explained
The
fruitless gene (
fru) is a
Drosophila melanogaster gene that encodes several variants of a
transcription factor protein. Normal
fruitless function is required for proper development of several anatomical structures necessary for courtship, including
motor neurons which innervate
muscles needed for fly sexual behaviors and behaviors such as gender-specific
aggression.
Function
Male flies with mutations in the
fruitless gene display altered sexual behavior. Fruitfly courtship, which involves a complex male-initiated
ritual, may be disrupted in a number of ways by mutated
fru alleles;
fru is necessary for every step in the ritual. Some alleles prevent courting entirely, while others disrupt individual components. Notably, some
loss-of-function alleles change or remove
sexual preference.
Although many genes are known to be involved in male courtship behavior, the
fruitless gene has been considered noteworthy because it exhibits sex-specific
alternative splicing. When females produce the male-spliced gene product, they behave as males. Males with the female-spliced gene product exhibit complete loss of male courtship behavior and sexual orientation..
Some of the controversy may be due to the complexity of the fruitless gene locus, which is still incompletely understood.
fruitless has at least four
promoters, each encoding proteins with a
beta-
turn-beta
domain containing a
zinc finger motif. Alternative splicing occurs at both the 5' and 3' ends, and there are several variants (other than the male- and female-specific splicing patterns)., any subset of which may actually regulate behavior.
Name
Early work refers to the gene as
fruity, an apparent pun on both the common name of
D. melanogaster, the
fruit fly, as well as a
slang word for
homosexual. As
social attitudes towards homosexuality changed,
fruity came to be regarded as offensive, or at best, not
politically correct. Thus, the gene was re-dubbed
fruitless, alluding to the lack of offspring produced by flies with the mutation. However, it should be noted that -- despite the original name and a continuing history of misleading inferences by some researchers and science reporters -- fruitless mutants primarily show defects in male-female courtship, with no significant alteration in male-male or female-female courtship. Thus, evidence isn't consistent with the idea that fruitless is any sort of 'gay gene'.
Further Information
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