Evidence for a more recently evolved clade within a Candida albicans North American population

Candida albicans is diploid and displays a primarily clonal mode of reproduction. There is, however, evidence for meiosis and the degree to which this occurs in nature is unknown. Although random mating would act to obscure clonal lineages, previous studies have demonstrated that collections of North American isolates display three major partitions with no evidence of geographic clustering. To better understand the extent of sexuality and its role in the phylogeny of the species, a reference subset of 50 isolates representing this tripartite division was analysed using 1 minisatellite, 5 microsatellites (MSs) and 15 nuclear polymorphisms (NP). A total of 87 alleles were observed for 21 loci and 12/16 informative loci exhibited a departure from Hardy-Weinberg expectations (G(2)