The development of Candida albicans DNA microarrays was carried out by Eurogentec in collaboration with the Galar Fungail European Consortium (http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/unites/Galar Fungail/). These microarrays contain 6947 ORF’s represented by 60-bp primers. The oligonucleotide probes were synthesized using the standard phosphoramidite method. For reasons of compatibility with the slide surface, the linker C6-NH2 was added to all primers at their 5’ end. Microarrays were prepared by printing amino-modified long oligos on high quality glass slides using a ChipWriterPro (ESII) robot (Bio-Rad). The arrayer used 32 pins to print DNA samples from 384-well microtiter plates onto glass slides. All the oligonucleotides were spotted as a duplicate and they were placed in area of 3.2 x 1.8 cm. The MicroArray contains 32 blocks and each block contains 416 dots. The distanced between spot to spot is ranging from 90 to 120 microns with 100 microns of spot diameter. The MicroArray includes serial dilution of Luciferase gene allowing to normalize the signal of hybridization and to evaluate the dynamic range of the scanners. For negative control three distinct oligonucleotides with 70, 50 and 30% identity of sequence with some highly expressed Yarrowia lipolytica genes, were incorporated to the MicroArray. This allows to evaluate the efficiency of hybridization and washing conditions.
