Word: zhang
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...bewildering to watch the behavior of certain fruit flies at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. There, in the laboratories of biologists Ward Odenwald and Shang-Ding Zhang, strange things are happening inside the gallon-size culture jars. In some experiments, the female flies are cowering in groups at the top and bottom of the jars. The males, meanwhile, are having a party -- no, an orgy -- among themselves. With a frenzy usually reserved for chasing females, the males link up end-to-end in big circles or in long, winding rows that look like winged conga lines...
What's going on? Without a wink or a chuckle, Odenwald claims that these male fruit flies are gay -- and that he and Zhang made them that way. The scientists say they transplanted a single gene into the flies that caused them to display homosexual behavior. And that's very interesting, they assert, because a related gene exists in human beings, although there is no evidence yet that the human gene has an effect on sexual preference...
...report of Odenwald and Zhang's findings, to be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds to the mounting evidence that homosexuality has genetic origins, and is sure to produce new fireworks in the contentious debate over what it means to be gay. The two scientists are not foolhardy enough to claim that a single gene can make a person homosexual. But they think their studies may yield important new insights into how genetic makeup, through a complex series of biochemical reactions, influences sexual orientation...
Odenwald and Zhang do not pretend to have any easy answers. In fact the type of gene they've been studying in fruit flies could not begin to account for the complex variations in human homosexual behavior. For one thing, the gene does not cause flies to renounce heterosexuality altogether. If a "gay" fly is surrounded by females instead of males, he'll fertilize the lady flies. So strictly speaking, the NIH flies are not homosexual but bisexual. And the gene produces no unusual behavior when transplanted into females: the scientists have produced no lesbian fruit flies...
...Love sucks" attitude, requesting the DJ to play such tunes as "I Will Survive," Grease's "You Better Shape Up ('cause I need a man)" and the always bitter "Love Bites." About fifty students danced hard under a strobe light, and according to second-year grad student Tony Zhang, had "a really good time." Leverett's dance attracted roughly two hundred students (mostly first-years and Leverett house residents) with the promise that "the first 100 will receive a kiss" -a rich, sweet Hershey's kiss. An additional perk was the personal ad board where students could advertise their availability...