CGH of common Candida albicans strains

The purpose of this review is to describe the tools used to detect genome changes, to highlight recent advances in our understanding of large scale chromosome changes that arise in C. albicans and to discuss the role of specific stresses in eliciting these genome changes. The types of genomic diversity that have been characterized suggest C. albicans can undergo extreme genomic changes in order to survive stresses in the human host. We propose that C. albicans and other pathogens may have evolved mechanisms not only to tolerate, but also to generate, large-scale genetic variation as a means of adaptation. Strains included in this series are described in a Eukaryotic Cell review of genomic plasticity of Candida albicans. These strains are well-characterized and some of them are frequently utilized by the Candida community to generate mutant strains. Each strain was analyzed once and all strains were competed against the same reference strain, SC5314 (the first sequenced C. albicans strain).