Mary lyons

Mary Frances Lyon (15 May 1925, Norwich; 25 December 2014) was a British geneticist who graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1946 and received her PhD in 1948. In Edinburgh, she studied risk radiation mutations by mutagenesis experiments in mice. She transferred to the Radiobiology Group of the MRC she in her Harwell she directed the Genetics Section between 1962 and 1986. in 1966 she proposed the following hypothesis:

One of the two X chromosomes in each female somatic cell is genetically inactive. Barr's body represents the inactive X chromosome. Its inactivation occurs around the 16th day of embryonic development. The process is called lyonization.

He is a member of the Royal Society of London; she is also a Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1994 she won the Mauro Baschirotto Prize for Human Genetics. In 1997 she received the Wolf Prize for Medicine and the Amory Prize for Genetics for her discoveries relating to the mammalian sex chromosomes.

Work

• Gene Action in the X-chromosome of the Mouse (Mus musculus L.) Nature 190, 372 - 373 (22 April 1961)