Characterization of a species-specific DNA fragment originating from the Candida albicans mitochondrial genome.

A species-specific DNA fragment EO3 isolated from Candida albicans was characterized. EO3 was shown to originate from a duplicated region of C. albicans mitochondrial (mt) DNA. Nucleotide sequence of a 0.9 kbp fragment (EO3S) which confers the species specificity of EO3 was determined. EO3S region in some strains contained two parts of deletions (or insertions) of 50-60 bp with short inverted repeats at both ends. The EO3S region was maintained stably in mtDNA of individual C. albicans strains and may be useful as target DNA for the diagnosis and epidemiological studies of candidiasis.