TABLE 3.

Discriminatory power of typing techniques and congruence between MLST and the other typing techniques for the three groups of C. albicans isolates^a

Isolate group	Technique	No. of genotypes identified	Index of diversity (%)	Congruence between MLST and fingerprinting techniques
				Cluster level	Genotype level
14 related-origin isolates	RAPD	7	89.0	72.5	91.2
	MLEE	9	94.5	72.5	96.7
	Ca3	11	96.7	72.5	98.9
	MLST	10	95.6
22 unrelated isolates	RAPD	16	96.5	83.1	96.9
	MLEE	21	99.6	85.3	99.6
	Ca3	22	100	90.5	99.6
	MLST	21	99.6
All 29 isolates	RAPD	17	95.0	82.7	95.8
	MLEE	23	98.3	82.3	98.5
	Ca3	26	99.3	86.2	99.5
	MLST	24	98.8

^aThe 14 related-origin isolates and 22 unrelated isolates are subsets of the original 29 C. albicans isolates used in this study. The genotypes for RAPD analysis, MLEE, and Ca3 Southern hybridization (Ca3) were based on the most discriminatory level of the previously produced dendrograms (18); any two isolates not labeled as identical were given a different genotype. The genotypes for MLST were based on the DSTs. The genotypes for RAPD analysis, MLEE, and Ca3 Southern hybridization and the DSTs for MLST were used to calculate the discriminatory power by using Simpson's index of diversity. For RAPD analysis, MLEE, and Ca3 Southern hybridization, the average S_AB value for the 29 C. albicans isolates was used as the cutoff point to divide the isolates into clusters of genetically related isolates (18); for MLST analysis, the sharing of three identical alleles of seven loci was used as the cutoff point to divide the 29 C. albicans isolates into clusters of genetically related isolates. The congruence between techniques, conducted at two genetic levels (genotype and cluster), was determined by cross-classification analyses of all possible pairs of isolates (n = 91 for the 14 related-origin isolates, n = 231 for the set of unrelated isolates, and n = 406 for all 29 isolates).