Chromosome instability and unusual features of some widely used strains of Candida albicans

Electrophoretic karyotyping of the Candida albicans revealed a different migration pattern of ChR in three different stocks of the sequencing strain SC5314. In one stock, the high instability of ChR size prevented the migration of ChR as a compact band; ChR appeared, instead, as a smear. In some stocks, ChR and/or Ch1 ploidy diminished, suggesting mixed populations of disomic and monosomic cells. Similarly, some stocks of widely used derivatives CAI4 and BWP17 contained smearing of ChR. In addition, the most manipulated strain in the lineage of SC5314, the last derivative, BWP17, acquired an increase in the size of Ch7b and revealed an unusual property. BWP17 did not tolerate a well-established procedure of telomere-mediated fragmentation of a chromosome; the remaining intact homologue always duplicated. We suggest that some stocks of SC5314 are unstable and that BWP17 may not be appropriate for general studies. Instead of BWP17 or CAI4, we recommend using for general research CAF4-2, which is a relatively stable Ura- derivative, and which has been successfully used for more than a decade in our laboratory.