dosage compensation

compensation /com·pen·sa·tion/ (kom″pen-sa´shun)

1. the counterbalancing of any defect.

2. the conscious or unconscious process by which a person attempts to make up for real or imagined physical or psychological deficiencies.

3. in cardiology, the maintenance of an adequate blood flow without distressing symptoms, accomplished by cardiac and circulatory adjustments.

---

dosage compensation  in genetics, the mechanism by which the effect of the two X chromosomes of the normal female is rendered identical to that of the one X chromosome of the normal male.

---

dosage compensation,

a mechanism by which the expression of X-linked traits is equalized in males, which have one X chromosome, and females, which have two. In mammals it is accomplished by the inactivation of one of the X chromosomes in the somatic cells of females. See also Lyon hypothesis.

---

dosage

1. in pharmaceutical terms is the determination and regulation of the size, frequency and number of doses.

2. genetically speaking refers to the amount of gene product in each cell.

---

dosage compensation

compensation by random X-inactivation, of the dosage of gene material in the cells of males and females carrying X-linked genes.