Emma Hilton Profile picture
Feb 21, 2022 12 tweets 4 min read Read on X
This is your regular reminder that I am not an entomologist and I do not study beetles.

My handle is derived from a quote about creationism and I research human genetics and genetic disorders, including one that kills males.

Here is a motor neuron I grew in a dish.
I do not study cool things like…

Jewel beetles. Studies of their iridescence (like liquid crystals) has helped paint chemists. It’s also surprisingly good camo (expt: attach bright or dull wings to mealworms and see which get eaten by birds…).
Dung beetles. They roll crap around all day. Their immune systems are a source of some interest.
Whirligig beetles. They have a tight turning circle for an inflexible body. Boat people are intrigued. London cabbies look smugly on.
Bombardier beetles. Toxic explosions of liquid from their tummy. Apparently, they might inform the design of fire extinguishers and nebulisers, but we’re all thinking jet packs, right?
Namibian desert beetles. How we might harvest water from thin air. Note: not by licking them. I don’t think.
Spanish fly. Beetlejuice. Juice for men, if you get my meaning.
Remote-control search-and-rescue beetle. Enough said.
I wish I studied beetles 😂

Source: popularmechanics.com/science/animal…
And how do beetles become male or female?

Well, it was in a beetle species that Nettie Stevens discovered the XY chromosome system.

vox.com/platform/amp/2…
And a key gene in beetle sex determination is called doublesex.

Males have a long form and females have a short form of doublesex.

The short, female form is made by the action of a protein called transformer.

Or TRA for short.

That is, TRA can convert male>female.
And a final beetle sex fact.

A male flour beetle will ‘mate’ with another. Maybe so when this second male mates with a female, he actually contributes the first male’s sperm. Or the first male is clearing out the old before he finds his own female.

Anyway, here you go.

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More from @FondOfBeetles

Sep 26
Shocking from @nrarmour here.

“Most of the studies used to ban transgender women so far are based on the performances of cisgender men, which scientists have argued is not an appropriate comparison.”

That’s me, @TLexercise and others.

“Others” including the ones moaning about not having their say. You know, the say they took for granted. The one they didn’t tell @nrarmour about.

Ever read their archery paper?Image
Image
“Other studies have compared the performances of transgender women athletes with sedentary cisgender women, also argued as an inappropriate comparison.”

NGL, bit flummoxed here. Any ideas?

If you want inappropriate comparisons, try the Fat Bloke Study. Written by the scientists moaning about being excluded.

Nancy @nrarmour links to it. Fails to care that the reason why trans-identifying males can’t jump as high as the female comparators is that they are 20kg heavier, carrying way more fat, and are far less fit.
For disclosure, I have not been part of this IOC working group.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 22
So the actual paper is fine. I’ve only skimmed, but it looks at gene expression between male and female humans and mice, to answer questions about the evolution of genes associated (or not) with sex. Image
The authors - who admit in peer review that these graphs exaggerate overlap - suggest in discussion that if one were to look at gene expression in, say, the skin from an individual within the overlap, you could not identify whether that individual was male or female.
It’s a high-level take on a more simple principle in this debate: overlapping height, and is a 5’8” individual male or female?

The authors use the same analogy in the introduction.
Read 9 tweets
Sep 20
World Athletics reveals the scale of the issue of male athletes with DSDs competing in the female category in international track and field.

I am not surprised at the number (I suspect the true figure is higher).

Nobody working in this area will be surprised at the number.
Even the ones who said it was “just a few”. They knew the scale.

Even the ones who said “you’re racist” as they fervently argued that black women are fundamentally different to white women. They knew the scale.
Also a poorly kept “secret” is that the majority of this cohort are 5ARD, where males can appear to be female at birth but have male-pattern athletic advantage.

This is the DSD that Caster Semenya has.
Read 6 tweets
Sep 13
I had no experience of Charlie Kirk beyond the occasional clip that went past my timeline, none of which I engaged with deeply.

From this UK POV, he was a preppy fundie Christian conservative doing preppy fundie Christian conservative stuff.

No opinion about him beyond characterising him as above, and not thinking at all about that.

But I have rarely wanted to defend anyone more.
Why would I want to defend a preppy fundie Christian conservative? Why did my gut plummet and my heart sink when I learned he had died?

Almost all of us can understand the human POV.
I wasn’t exposed to him. I had to look up everything everyone was saying he said.

None of the below is about me and his views. It’s about the appalling dishonesty I see.

The way social media works. Or doesn’t.
Read 7 tweets
Aug 19
So, this paper is being widely circulated as a gotcha.

First thing, any author whose affiliation is "The University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, Australia" is probably winning at life.

But let's talk about bird sex.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…
Birds use genetic sex determination, just like humans.

The "make male" gene for humans is called SRY, and it lives on the Y chromosome.

If you have functional SRY and its downstream transcriptional storm, you will make testes and make male.
Birds differ. Their "make male" gene is called DMRT1.

It pretty much works like SRY, in that it's immediate downstream target is the parallel gene in both humans and parrots, and the ensuing transcriptional storm triggers testes development (testes being male, of course).
Read 16 tweets
Aug 9
"This model of estradiol’s role in improving resistance to wound sepsis predicts at least four “sexes” across two treatment groups: females who are in the proestrus phase, females who are in the diestrus phase, females who are postmenopausal, and males."

This is Sarah Richardson, of the Fuentes review.

Four "sexes", three of them female and the other male. JFC.


Also in the frame as new sexes, fat men, pregnant women and children. JFC.scholar.harvard.edu/files/srichard…
A cell line derived from an unusual cervical cancer (one that spontaneously immortalised) is not even "human", let alone "female", apparently.

It's cervical cancer cell line. Only women have cervices (pl?). JFC.
Read 9 tweets

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