Junk DNA makes voles better dads

ATLANTA, June 21 (UPI) -- Scientists in Georgia have found that male voles with a certain strand of junk DNA are more attentive mates and better fathers.

Larry Young and Elizabeth Hammock of Emory University bred strains of prairie voles with different lengths of micro satellite DNA in a gene coding for a hormone. They found that the voles with the longer strand of DNA were more attentive to their mates and spent more time with their pups.

Microsatellites are strands of repetitive DNA that do not encode for proteins and thus are considered junk. About 95 percent of human DNA is junk.

But Young said that junk strands of DNA appear to have a purpose.

"They can be a mechanism for rapid evolution and adaptation," he says.