Identification of medically significant fungal genera by polymerase chain reaction followed by restriction enzyme analysis.

Rapid non-culture-dependent assays for identification of fungi quicken diagnosis and prompt treatment of invasive fungal disease. Fungal DNA extracts from pure cultures of the most frequently isolated fungal pathogens belonging to the Genera Aspergillus, Candida and Cryptococcus along with less common pathogenic Genera were amplified with the general fungal primer pair internal transcribed spacer-1/4. Subsequently, the amplicon was digested with the restriction endonucleases MspI, HaeIII, HinfI and EcoRI in order to generate genus- or species-specific patterns for identification of the fungus. HinfI produced indistinguishable fingerprints for all Aspergillus species tested. MspI produced species-specific patterns for: Cryptococcus neoformans, Cryptococcus non-neoformans, Candida albicans and Candida tropicalis. EcoRI succeeded in differentiating penicillia from aspergilli and cryptococci from Candida spp. It is concluded that this procedure can differentiate genera and occasionally species of medically important fungi and that following the necessary validation experiments, it can be used directly on clinical samples to assist prompt diagnosis of systemic fungal infections.