Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index A genetic mosaic is an organism which has cellss with different genotypes. Mosacism may result from a mutation during development which is propogated to only a subset of the adult cells. Mammalian females are usually mosaic because one of their X chromosomes is randomly inactivated during development. Genetic mosaics are used in experimental genetics to determine whether a gene functions cell autonomously. If a mosaic in which genes are lost or added in a subset of cells causes a change in the phenotype of only the altered cells, then the gene is said to act cell autonomously (with regard to the phenotype studied). This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.