A new estimate of sequence divergence of mitochondrial DNA using restriction endonuclease mappings

A new estimate of the sequence divergence of mitochondrial DNA in related species using restriction enzyme maps is constructed. The estimate is derived assuming a simple Posisson-like model for the evolutionary process and is chosen to maximize an expression which is a reasonable approximation to the true likelihood of the restriction map data. Using this estimate, four sets of mitochondrial DNA data are analyzed and discussed.