Abstract
Candida tropicalis DNA was used as a template in a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) utilizing a 10-mer primer to generate random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD). RAPD patterns associated with 25 primers were obtained for six epidemiologically-unrelated isolates, then a subset of six primers were selected to screen a panel of 18 isolates of C. tropicalis and six isolates of Candida paratropicalis, a species that resembles C. tropicalis but has a sucrose-negative phenotype. The panel, which included nine epidemiologically-related isolates from an outbreak of sternal wound infections, was typed without knowledge of each isolate's origin. The RAPD profiles of the epidemiologically-related isolates were identical to very similar; in contrast, the profiles of most unrelated isolates showed more dissimilarity. While RAPD profiles of C. albicans and Candida parapsilosis differed substantially from those of C. tropicalis, the profiles obtained for C. paratropicalis were consistent with it being a variant of C. tropicalis.