Somatic recombination is essential to protect genomes of somatic cells from DNA damage but it also has important clinical implications, as it is a driving force of tumorigenesis leading to inactivation of tumor suppressor genes. Despite this importance, our knowledge about somatic recombination in adult tissues remains very limited. Our recent work, using the Drosophila adult midgut has demonstrated that spontaneous events of mitotic recombination accumulate in aging adult intestinal stem cells and result in frequent loss of heterozygosity (LOH). In this Extra View article, we provide further data supporting long-track chromosome LOH and discuss potential mechanisms involved in the process. In addition, we further discuss relevant questions surrounding somatic recombination and how the mechanisms and factors influencing somatic recombination in adult tissues can be explored using the Drosophila midgut model.

体细胞重组对于保护体细胞基因组免受DNA损伤至关重要，但它也具有重要的临床意义，因为它是导致肿瘤抑制基因失活的肿瘤发生驱动力。尽管具有这种重要性，我们对成人组织中体细胞重组的知识仍然非常有限。我们最近的研究，使用果蝇成年中肠已证明，在衰老的成年肠干细胞中积累了自发性有丝分裂重组事件，并导致频繁的杂合性丧失（LOH）。在这篇Extra View文章中，我们提供了支持长距离染色体LOH的更多数据，并讨论了该过程涉及的潜在机制。此外，我们进一步讨论了围绕体细胞重组的相关问题，以及如何使用果蝇中肠模型探讨影响成人组织中体细胞重组的机制和因素。