In females, the phenomenon by which one X chromosome (either
maternally or paternally derived) is randomly inactivated in early embryonic
cells, with fixed inactivation in all descendant cells; first described by
the geneticist Mary Lyon
Definition from: GeneTests
from the University of Washington and Children's Health System, Seattle
The repression of one of the two X-chromosomes in the somatic cells of females as a method of dosage compensation; at an early embryonic stage in the normal female, one of the two X-chromosomes undergoes inactivation, apparently at random, from this point on all descendent cells will have the same X-chromosome inactivated as the cell from which they arose, thus a female is a mosaic composed of two types of cells, one which expresses only the paternal X-chromosome, and another which expresses only the maternal X-chromosome.
