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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, February 2008, p. 652-664, Vol. 46, No. 2
0095-1137/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JCM.01574-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Multilocus Sequence Typing Reveals that the Population Structure of Candida dubliniensis Is Significantly Less Divergent than That of Candida albicans ^,

Microbiology Research Unit, Division of Oral Biosciences, Dublin Dental School & Hospital, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Republic of Ireland,¹ Unité Biologie et Pathogénicité Fongiques, INRA USC2019, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France,² Department of Microbiology and Virology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Mlynská dolina B-2, 842 15 Bratislava, Slovak Republic,³ Department of Laboratory Medicine, the Adelaide and Meath Hospital, Dublin, Incorporating the National Children's Hospital, Tallaght, Dublin 24, Ireland⁴

Received 8 August 2007/ Returned for modification 4 November 2007/ Accepted 20 November 2007

The pathogenic yeast Candida dubliniensis is phylogenetically very closely related to Candida albicans, and both species share many phenotypic and genetic characteristics. DNA fingerprinting using the species-specific probe Cd25 and sequence analysis of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the ribosomal gene cluster previously showed that C. dubliniensis is comprised of three major clades comprising four distinct ITS genotypes. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) has been shown to be very useful for investigating the epidemiology and population biology of C. albicans and has identified many distinct major and minor clades. In the present study, we used MLST to investigate the population structure of C. dubliniensis for the first time. Combinations of 10 loci previously tested for MLST analysis of C. albicans were assessed for their discriminatory ability with 50 epidemiologically unrelated C. dubliniensis isolates from diverse geographic locations, including representative isolates from the previously identified three Cd25-defined major clades and the four ITS genotypes. Dendrograms created by using the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic averages that were generated using the data from all 10 loci revealed a population structure which supports that previously suggested by DNA fingerprinting and ITS genotyping. The MLST data revealed significantly less divergence within the C. dubliniensis population examined than within the C. albicans population. These findings show that MLST can be used as an informative alternative strategy for investigating the population structure of C. dubliniensis. On the basis of the highest number of genotypes per variable base, we recommend the following eight loci for MLST analysis of C. dubliniensis: CdAAT1b, CdACC1, CdADP1, CdMPIb, CdRPN2, CdSYA1, exCdVPS13, and exCdZWF1b, where "Cd" indicates C. dubliniensis and "ex" indicates extended sequence.

Published ahead of print on 5 December 2007.

Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jcm.asm.org/.

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