Lyon’s hypothesis states that in mammals the necessary dosage compensation is accomplished by the inactivation of one of the X chromosome in females so that both males and females have only one functional X chromosome per cell.
Mary Lyon suggested that Barr bodies represented an inactive chromosome, which in females becomes tightly coiled into a heterochromatin, a condensed and visible form of chromatin Lyon’s hypothesis). The number of Barr bodies observed in cell was one less than the number of X-Chromosome. XO females have no Barr body, whereas XXY males have one Ban- body.
