Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1965, Side 87

True Hermaphroditism
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stage. The later in foetal life the embryo is castrated, the
greater the number of intersexual conditions with progressively
increasing masculinization.
Sex chromatin.
In 1949 Barr and, Bertrarn1’ found that in female cats a
chromatin body was situated at the nuclear membrane in the
nerve cells, which was not the case in male individuals. Later
this phenomenon was demonstrated in human cells from skin
biopsies, from scrapings of the oral mucous membrane, in
leucocytes, and in many different kinds of tissue sections. The
phenomenon has been very valuable in the clinical examination
of sexual and chromosomal developmental disturbances and
abnormalities, since the cellular sex can be determined by this
investigation. It is supposed that the Barr-body is formed by
one single X sex chromosome, so that the number of Barr-bodies
in a cell is always one below the total number of X sex
chromosomes in a cell7. Actually, in certain conditions chromo-