Introduction

Candida albicans is a common commensal yeast that colonizes the gastrointestinal or genital tract of 15 – 30 % of healthy humans. It can cause either benign and frequent infections such as oral and vaginal candidiasis or more serious infections such as life-threatening invasive infections in immunocompromised hosts (patients undergoing chemotherapy, transplantation,..). Invasive candidiasis mainly occur in hospitalized patients and C. albicans, which is currently a leading cause of nosocomial infections, is responsible for 60% of cases of candidemia.

The C. albicans MLST scheme has been developed for the unambiguous characterisation of isolates by M.E. Bougnoux and C. d’Enfert in the Fungal Biology and Pathogenicity Unit at Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. MLST was originally developed for bacteria which are prokaryotic organisms. C. albicans is the first eukaryotic species to which it is applied.

The initial database has been developed for C. albicans using a collection of 40 isolates from cases of human invasive diseases and colonization, and two reference strains (ATCC 36232 and SC5314)(1). The genome sequence of strain SC5314 has been determined at the Stanford Genome Technology Center (2).
Currently, the C. albicans database contains the profiles of at least 180 isolates collected from human (i.e. invasive diseases, nosocomial colonization, and healthy carriage) and also from birds (starlings).

Those carrying out MLST on this species are encouraged to submit their data to the curator (C. d’Enfert denfert@pasteur.fr) so that the strain details can be added to the database. In this way the MLST database becomes an increasingly useful resource for the C. albicans community.