@article{mbs:/content/journal/micro/10.1099/00221287-145-9-2405, author = "Schmid, Jan and Herd, Scott and Hunter, Paul R. and Cannon, Richard D. and Yasin, M. Salleh M. and Samad, Shamin and Carr, Mary and Parr, Dinah and McKinney, Wendy and Schousboe, Mona and Harris, Ben and Ikram, Rosemary and Harris, Mike and Restrepo, Angela and Hoyos, Guillermo and Singh, Kumar P.", title = "Evidence for a general-purpose genotype in Candida albicans , highly prevalent in multiple geographical regions, patient types and types of infection ", journal= "Microbiology", year = "1999", volume = "145", number = "9", pages = "2405-2413", doi = "https://doi.org/10.1099/00221287-145-9-2405", url = "https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/micro/10.1099/00221287-145-9-2405", publisher = "Microbiology Society", issn = "1465-2080", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "UPGMA, unweighted pair group method using arithmetic averages", keywords = " evolution", keywords = "Candida albicans", keywords = "Ca3 fingerprinting ", keywords = "general-purpose genotype", keywords = "pathogenesis", abstract = "Epidemiological studies, using the probe Ca3, have shown that in a given patient population a single cluster of genetically related Candida albicans isolates usually predominates. The authors have investigated whether these local clusters are part of a single group, geographically widespread and highly prevalent as an aetiological agent of various types of candidiasis. An unrooted neighbour-joining tree of 266 infection-causing C. albicans isolates (each from a different individual) from 12 geographical regions in 6 countries was created, based on genetic distances generated by Ca3 fingerprinting. Thirty-seven per cent of all isolates formed a single genetically homogeneous cluster (cluster A). The remainder of isolates were genetically diverse. Using the maximum branch length within cluster A as a cut-off, they could be divided into 37 groups, whose prevalence ranged between 0ยท3% and 9%. Strains from cluster A were highly prevalent in all but one geographical region, with a mean prevalence across all regions of 41%. When isolates were separated into groups based on patient characteristics or type of infection, strains from cluster A had a prevalence exceeding 27% in each group, and their mean prevalence was 43% across all patient characteristics. These data provide evidence that cluster A constitutes a general-purpose genotype, which is geographically widespread and acts as a predominant aetiological agent of all forms of candidiasis in all categories of patients surveyed.", }