Comparing Mitochondrial Genome Sequences

by Justin Entote

Submitted : Spring 2012

I found the probability of a nucleotide sequence in a mitochondrial genome will transform into another at a certain time based on the matching and non-matching base pairs in the sequence. This was accomplished by directly comparing mitochondrial genomes of two eukaryotic species that had a similar amount of base pairs in the sequence and finding where the base pairs were identical. Once the number of matching pairs was found I was able to calculate the probability of transformation of those two species. From the results, I was able to find that unless the number of mismatches between two genome sequences is a very low number, even time was a very large number, the probability of a mitochondrial genome sequence transforming into another is such a small number that it can be defined as zero.

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