From owner-drosophila@net.bio.net Wed May 24 23:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!UHUNIX.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU!tlyttle From: tlyttle@UHUNIX.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU (Terrence Lyttle) Newsgroups: bionet.drosophila Subject: Candida krusei Date: 24 May 1995 22:56:56 -0700 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 23 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Distribution: world Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net I recently posted a message to the Drosophila group concerning the use of Candida as a food source sprayed on culture media which also helps eliminate bacterial contaminations. I inadvertently perpetuated a misspelling of the species name that is a carryover from my undergraduate days (and has apparently become fixed in my somewhat fossilized brain). The species name is Candida krusei (not crusiae, as in my previous post). I noted that strains of this species are available from the American Type Culture (at a cost, of course), and that it should be benign in humans. When we obtained our culture from ATCG, they only had isolates derived from plant material. It has been brought to my attention that now there are a number of isolates from human sources, which is somewhat worrisome. As far as I understand, krusei is not a problem for humans (unlike C. albicans), and we have never had any problem with these yeast cultures over the 15 years or so that they have been present (off and on) in our laboratory. If anyone is interested obtaining strains from ATCG, we are using strain #22985 (it also goes under the name C. requinyii -- I don't know why). If people are really worried about a potential problem for humans, perhaps it would be better to try strain #60585, which came from a rye sourdough starter in Germany. That should be innocuous enough, one hopes! As a purely nonscientific piece of information -- note that healthy Candida krusei cultures should smell a bit like juicy fruit gum. Terry Lyttle .