The Wing-Spot and the Comet Tests as Useful Assays for Detecting Genotoxicity in Drosophila

In spite of its pioneer use in detecting mutational processes, Drosophila still plays an important role in those studies aiming to detect and quantify the induction of DNA damage. Here we describe two assays, one detecting primary damage (the Comet assay) and the other detecting somatic mutation and recombination effects (wing-spot test). It is important to emphasize that somatic recombination is a key event in cancer development and no assays exist at present to detect and quantify somatic recombination processes, other than the spot tests developed in Drosophila.