Electrophoretic karyotypes of isolates of Candida albicans from hospitalized patients

Electrophoretic karyotypes, namely, the patterns of chromosome-sized DNAs that have been separated by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, have been reported to vary among different strains of Candida albicans, and can be useful for the delineation of strains. A previous study showed that almost all the electrophoretic karyotypes of isolates of C. albicans collected from the vagina of outpatients were distinguishable from one another. A few of the isolates had a common atypical karyotype and these isolates all had the same phenotype. This report describes the electrophoretic karyotype analysis of isolates from various specimens taken from hospitalized patients. Karyotypes were analysed with respect to the origins of the isolates in terms of two parameters: the number of bands resolved on the gel and a code of four numbers which corresponded to the number of bands that could be separated in each of four sets of chromosome sizes. No specific karyotype was correlated with either the nature of the specimen or the hospital ward to which the patient had been admitted. Most isolates gave a pattern similar to that of FC18 and no atypical karyotypes were found.