Comparative genomics of clinical Candida albicans strains

Candida albicans is the most common fungal pathogen in humans. C.albicans tolerates aneuploidy of all of its chromosomes. Genome plasticity is a hallmark of C.albicans. It is an adaptation strategy of this species. But questions like the extent of such genomic variability, which genes contribute to the divergence, and what mechanisms drive the adaptive genetic change, are not well answered yet. We used array-based comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH; aCGH) to investigate the diversity of gene contents of 8 clinical C.albicans strains of various anatomical origins and genotypes. One self to self hybridization was included as a control.