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The articles discusses research on prairie voles. A new molecules-to-behavior analysis links particularly dutiful fatherhood in these hamster-size rodents to a stretch of DNA that scientists once dismissed as meaningless junk. Earlier research tied the prairie vole's paternal devotion to a long stretch of repeated DNA snippets near a gene linked to detecting the hormone vasopressin. This hormone affects family behavior in voles. Meadow voles come up short in this snippet count. Now, Elizabeth Hammock and Larry Young of Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta report on snippet variations within the prairie vole species itself.

Focuses on the work of Larry Young which led to the first discovery of a variant of an estrogen receptor in normal tissue. Young's original study of the role of estrogen in the sexual behavior of a species of lizard; RNA which led to a newly identified estrogen receptor--which exists primarily in the brain; Role of James K. Skipper, a molecular biologist; Report in the August 1, 1993 `Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'; More.