What is imprinting? Give an example?!

Question

anonymous · Answer

Depends if you mean genetic imprinting or imprinting in a psychological sense. There are also molecular imprinting and metabolic imprinting to think about. To cut a long story short, genetic imprinting means that chromosomes express genes differently depending on whether they come from the maternal or paternal cells. This difference is achieved by epigenetic effects on the chromatin - methylation being very important in this process. Alternatively tthe other sort of imprinting can be seen in ducks and geese in particular: the offspring take on the characteristics of the parent, following them about. There are some very cool examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)