Ribbon meaning: childhood cancer (alternative color: pink), prostate cancer, Trisomy 18, and scleroderma. Dark Blue: knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness. Ribbon meaning: arthritis, child abuse prevention, victim's rights, free speech, water quality, and water safety. Brown: stability, masculine qualities.
But, it was not until the early 1900s that any scientific studies were done of the phenomenon. Austrian naturalist Konrad Lorenz became the first to codify and establish the science behind the imprinting process. Lorenz found that when young birds came out of their eggs they would become attached to the first moving object they encountered. In most cases in the wild, that would be their mother.
If the allele from the mother is imprinted, then only the allele from the father is expressed. Forms of genomic imprinting have been demonstrated in fungi, plants and animals. Genomic imprinting is a fairly rare phenomenon in mammals; most genes are not imprinted. In insects, imprinting affects entire chromosomes. In some insects the entire paternal genome is silenced in male offspring, and thus is involved in sex determination.