Introduction to the Candida albicans Genome

C. albicans, a diploid sexual fungus, is the causal agent of opportunistic infections in humans, the most common being oral and vaginal infections. Systemic fungal infections have emerged as important causes of morbidity and mortality in immunocompromised patients (e.g., AIDS, cancer chemotherapy, organ or bone marrow transplantation). In addition, hospital-related infections in patients not previously considered at risk (e.g. patients on an intensive care unit) have become a cause of major health concern.

C. albicans genome is composed of eight pairs of chromosomes. The numbers of 1 to 7 represent the largest to smallest chromosomes. Another chromosome which varies in size and mainly carries tandemly arrayed genes for the ribosomal RNAs is called R chromosome. The diploid genome is estimated to be about 15.5-16 Mb. The genome was assembled at Stanford Genome Technology Center. The Candida albicans mitochondrial genome is a circle of approximately 40kb.

We down-loaded assembly 19 contigs and used them as genomic assemblies at TIGR. Due to high frequency of polymorphsim in the genome, most contigs in assembly 19 present distinct sequences for the two alleles. In a region that is homozygous, one contig has been assembled for both alleles.

Using the gene structures generated by the annotation effort at National Research Council Canada, we run functional annotation pipeline at TIGR in which gene product names and GO terms are assigned automatedly. These data are implemented in MANATEE, a web interface to present gene annotation results. We hope that it will be helpful for users to find their interested clones.