Somatic hypermutation (or SHM)'s a mechanism inside cells that's part of the way the immune system adapts to the new foreign elements that confront it (for example, microbes). SHM diversifies the receptors used by the immune system to recognize foreign elements (antigens) and allows the immune system to adapt its response to new threats during the lifetime of an organism. Somatic hypermutation involves a programmed process of mutation affecting the variable regions of immunoglobulin genes. Unlik… (More on Hypermutation)