Haplotyping a Non-meiotic Diploid Fungal Pathogen Using Induced Aneuploidies and SNP/CGH Microarray Analysis

Abstract

The generation of haplotype information has recently become very attractive due to its utility for identifying mutations associated with human disease and for the development of personalized medicine. Haplotype information also is crucial for studying recombination mechanisms and genetic diversity, and for analyzing allele-specific gene expression. Classic haplotyping methods require the analysis of hundreds of meiotic progeny. To facilitate haplotyping in the non-meiotic human fungal pathogen Candida albicans, we exploited trisomic heterozygous chromosomes generated via the UAU1 selection strategy. Using this system, we obtained phasing information from allelic biases, detected by SNP/CGH microarray analysis. This strategy has the potential to be applicable to other diploid, asexual Candida species that are important causes of human disease.