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Self Assessment Answer #
4
by Dr Jamie Love |
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Self Assessment Answer #
4
by Dr Jamie Love |
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This is NOT normal! Usually a male cannot show signs of mosaic patterns caused by X inactivation. That's because normal males have only one X and they cannot inactivate the only X chromosome they have. To do so would bring certain death!
A karyotype of the cat showed that he was XXY - a "Klinefelter kitty" 
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Like the version of human Klinefelter, this cat was a relatively normal looking male but every cell in its body had a Barr body (produced by its extra X chromosome). The X inactivation caused his coat to have the mottled appearance of a female calico cat.
(Of course, like all calico cats, he must have been heterozygote, on his X chromosome, for different coat colors.)
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