%0 Journal Article
%T Identification of cultured isolates of clinically important yeast species using fluorescent fragment length analysis of the amplified internally transcribed rRNA spacer 2 region
%A Thierry De Baere
%A Geert Claeys
%A Danielle Swinne
%A Caroline Massonet
%A Gerda Verschraegen
%A An Muylaert
%A Mario Vaneechoutte
%J BMC Microbiology
%D 2002
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2180-2-21
%X A rapid DNA-extraction method, based on simple boiling-freezing was introduced. Of the 26 species tested, 22 could be identified unambiguously by scoring the length of the ITS2-region. No distinction could be made between the species Trichosporon asteroides and T. inkin or between T. mucoides and T. ovoides. The two varieties of Cryptococcus neoformans (var. neoformans and var. gattii) could be differentiated from each other due to a one bp length difference of the ITS2 fragment. The three Cryptococcus laurentii isolates were split into two groups according to their ITS2-fragment lengths, in correspondence with the phylogenetic groups described previously. Since the obtained fragment lengths compare well to those described previously and could be exchanged between two laboratories, an internationally usable library of ITS2 fragment lengths can be constructed.The existing ITS2 size based library enables identification of most of the clinically important yeast species within 6 hours starting from a single colony and can be easily updated when new species are described. Data can be exchanged between laboratories.Rapid and correct identification of the different clinically relevant yeast species has become more important because of several reasons. During the last decade, the impact and frequency of yeast infections has gained importance mainly due to an increased number of immunocompromised patients [1]. Furthermore, an increasing number of non-C. albicans yeast species are considered as potential agents of clinical infections [2]. Finally, the differences in susceptibility towards antifungal agents between the different species make that rapid yeast identification can be used as a first indication for efficient treatment.Phenotypic identification relies on cell and colony morphology and on biochemical characteristics, but this approach is not always fully discriminative, may be time-consuming and requires specific expertise of the technicians [3]. Therefore several gr
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2180/2/21