Simplify the following text for a Grade 11 native English-speaking person.
Original: In the summer of 1944 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory , McClintock began systematic studies on the mechanisms of the mosaic color patterns of maize seed and the unstable inheritance of this mosaicism .
Simplified: In the summer of 1944 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory , McClintock began systematic studies on the inheritance of color patterns of maize seeds .