PCR fingerprinting: a convenient molecular tool to distinguish between Candida dubliniensis and Candida albicans.

Candida dubliniensis was recently identified as a germ-tube- and chlamydospore-positive yeast, phenotypically and morphologically indistinguishable from the phylogenetically closely related yeast species C. albicans and its synonymized variant C. stellatoidea. The high similarity between these yeast species causes significant problems in the correct identification of C. dubliniensis in a standard clinical mycology laboratory. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) fingerprinting was successfully applied here to distinguish between clinical isolates of the two closely related species. Microsatellite ([GACA]4) and minisatellite ([5'-GAGGGTGGCGGTTCT-3'], derived from the core-sequence of the wild-type phage M13) specific oligonucleotides were used as single primers in PCR to amplify hypervariable inter-repeat DNA sequences from 16 C. dubliniensis strains and 11 C. albicans strains. Each species, represented by its ex-type strain, could be identified by a distinct species-specific multilocus pattern, allowing identification to species level for all clinical isolates. In addition, the PCR fingerprinting generated strain-specific profiles, making this method applicable to epidemiological investigations. PCR fingerprinting using the primer M13 is proposed here as a simple, reliable and highly reproducible molecular tool to differentiate between strains of C. albicans and C. dubliniensis.