Switching a Gene in Adult Mice Easily Transforms Females Into Males

Amazing!

That's just sick The world doesn't need any more pregnant dads.

who's to say what is sick?
if you were a women trapped in a male's body and this could help you immensely, why would that be sick?

What gene is it - the gene that allows you to parallel park? KIDDING I'M KIDDING...a little.

Fascinating- I'm excited to see how this will effect gender reassignment options!

To animemaster,
Scientifically speaking there is no such thing as pregnant dads. The famous pregnant man was merely a woman who was going through the transition of becoming a male. She still had all her female sexual organs, she just got rid of her breast and started growing facial hair.

From this article, I do not think it will be a nuclear attack or global warming that kills us off. Do you think Barb will know what to do when Ken comes home one day looking better than she does?

...

That's just sick The world doesn't need any more pregnant dads.

I know, don't feed the troll, BUT:

Regardless of advances in how science understands sex and gender, and regardless of public opinion on the matter, there ARE more pregnant dads. It's been happening for quite a while, and will continue to happen. Mr. Beatie wasn't the first or the last, he's just the first one who courted the media and publicized his journey.

Pregnant transsexual and transgendered men are unusual, but not anomalous, and a lot more common than people seem to think. We just tend to keep it quiet because of, well, attitudes like that one.

"What gene is it - the gene that allows you to parallel park? KIDDING I'M KIDDING...a little."

No. It is the gene that allows females to say, with a perfectly straight face, "If you really knew me, you would have ..."

Awesome
now I can have sex by myself
:D

JK!

When you are in the womb you have both sex organs. So of course there should be some way to change your sex through genes.

A man trapped in a woman's body is a woman with a mental defect. Fixing the body to go with the crazy seems far more extream than fixing the crazy to go with the body.

Someone who is transsexual, is by definition deformed. Fixing them to whichever is fertile would be the only thing that would not just be needless surgury. If both would be sterile, why do either? Concealing a freak to make it more acceptable to society does not change the fact that the person is deformed.

Having the argument than people can be one gender inside and another outside is as foolish as saying that someone is taller just because they are standing on something higher. It is warped perspective at its worst.

@Oakspar77777

I hope you realise that this same logic dominated 'treatment' for transsexuals from about 1940 (the first ever surgery in modern times was 1936 - Nazi Germany. Go figure) until about the mid-50's.

By that time, the weight of evidence showed that treating it as a 'mental defect' was impossible.

The alternative of physical modification has been the main form of treatment ever since, because it is the only practical option for the mental well-being of the person involved.

Please don't say things like that as if they're somehow 'insightful', because the medical community agrees with you, but realised that it's impossible to treat from that perspective.

Agree with CrystalShadow, a psychological treatment will never exist and a neurological treatment (Just to demonstrate the scope of this, out of the 12000 genes active in the mouse brain, 51 are expressed at different levels regardless of circulating hormones-i'm a neuroscience researcher at umich) is still years away at best. In short, this 'marring' of the body is the only solution for the mental health of the patient.

Oakspar77777

You obviously have no understanding of genetics, human development, psychology or sexuality.

You sound like the type of person that would have thought the world was flat if you were born in a different time.

If you do any research on the subject you would see that there is very little difference between men and women. We all start off female. That is right. You were a female at one point when you were in the womb. Since you are apparently a male (couldn't imagine a female having this opinion) then you are a deformed female. Switching off one gene and having it transform a female mouse in to a male mouse should prove that point.

So gender isn't black and white like most would believe. Gender is actual like a gray scale with black and white on each end and various shades in the middle. I'm sure everyone knows a man that if more feminine than other men or a woman and is more masculine than other women. No one has a problem with a guy that doesn't have hair all over his body or that isn't into sports. No one has a problem with a woman that likes to hike, hunt or play softball. This is because we are all somewhere in this gray scale. Being something other than black or white doesn't mean that you deformed.

Where this becomes an issue (in some people's minds) is when a man is physically male but is psychologically female and visa versa. These people are caught in a different part of the gray scale that isn't accepted by current society.

By the way, the medical community doesn't believe that it is a mental defect anymore. Most believe what I have mentioned above. That there are individuals that are genetically and/or psychologically different than the physical gender.

I would caution people not to jump to the conclusion that this is about sexuality. It isn't. These are two separate things. One's physical or genetic gender has no affect on one's sexual preference. If you have a problem with someone's sexual preference that is an entirely different topic.

There is a very interesting article on a website called Transgendercare. I can't put the link in my comment but you can guess their web address. Just go to their website and click on the Guidance/Transition tab. It is one of the featured articles called "What is Gender and Who is Transgendered".

I suggest that you take a look at it.

Allie

She still had all her female sexual organs, she just got rid of her breast and started growing facial hair.
www.eprostateproblems.com/

Did you notice that your comment was that "the medical community doesn't believe that. . . anymore." The problem is, that is belief (then and now) not belief replaced with evidence (as is your flat Earth claim).

Gender is not a sliding scale. Yes, we all begin female. Some turn male, some remain female, some begin the shift and due to defect do not make it there.

Male, female, and deformity can be measured in the genetic code. How one "feels" is not science, but psycology, and reguardless of how one feels, the genes determine gender, not the constructs of the brain which are culturally and environmentally conditioned.

That they can modify the genes to change hormone production did not change the mouse's developed organs, only the continued development. Could this be done before development to change gender, sure, but would that result in someone "trapped" in the wrong gender - no.

Wanting deviants, rather genetic or psycological, to be normal is a noble persuit - but it is best done by helping them become normal, not changing the definition of normal to include them as if nothing was wrong.

If your going to do so,do it right.As a biological condition that some see as rightfully a degree of hermaphrodism.2 % of all animal species are consistently born obviously, to some degree, intersexed.
If we widen that scope to include internal displacements such as nervous systems(brain sex),we include transsexual and transgendered men and women.That raises that # from 2% to 6%(doubling the original twice for inclusion of both conditions)if not higher.
Now that heightened number can no longer be consider environmental mutation,but evolutionary purpose. If we are to accept the theory of evolution, then we all came from asexual reproduction. Therefor pollination and development of different sex characteristics, being evolutionary tools (also called mutations) in which to spread DNA;a substance that can be either strengthened or corroded all the while retaining its original function.
Just as male is a mutation,so to is female. Acknowledging that social scripts and roles are inventions of any given society of animals through ingenuity and need;one may incorrectly dismiss ones true gender expression as simply a want.
Life is selfish and if it can stand alone and florish it will. meaning if it no longer has need for binary reproduction,it will halt its use.Single celled reproduction being the original encoding.
In an attempt to keep itself the most efficient form,it harkens back.Sometimes as in the case of mammals it may have evolved to far in this use of the binary to be effective,but it still trys. Producing the intersexed consistently. Waiting for a time in which this gene manipulation has a chance at furthering evolution. These poor creatures are usually cannibalised or killed by their species in an attempt to keep that version as the status quo.Bigotry bieng an instinct thats use is, as a self defense mechanism.