title: The human commensal yeast, Candida albicans, has an ancient origin.
abstract: Candida albicans, the primary causative agent of candidiasis, is a ubiquitous member of the human flora and is capable of causing severe invasive disease. Despite its importance as a human pathogen, little is known concerning those factors creating and maintaining genetic diversity within the species and how extant strains reflect their evolutionary history. Based on nucleotide polymorphism frequencies, we estimated the time to a most recent common ancestor for the species to be about 3-16 million years, with variation due to molecular clock calibration. As C. albicans genotypes have broad geographic associations, this suggests that the origins of DNA sequence variation in extant populations coincided with early hominid evolution. This is consistent with an emerging view of a genetically complex organism that is able to survive under host immunity as an obligate commensal species.
authors.affiliation: Mycotic Diseases Branch, Division of Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30333, USA. TJL1@cdc.gov
authors.forename: Timothy J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Lott
authors.forename: Ruth E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Fundyga
authors.forename: Randall J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Kuykendall
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Arnold
mesh_terms: D002176:Candida albicans / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D019295:Computational Biology; D004271:DNA, Fungal / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D014644:Genetic Variation; D010802:Phylogeny; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic
chemical_list: D004271:DNA, Fungal