Amino acid substitution of proteins coded for in mitochondrial DNA during mammalian evolution

Three Markov models (Dayhoff, Proportional and Poisson models; Hasegawa et al., 1992a) for amino acid substitution during evolution were used for maximum likelihood analyses of proteins coded for in mitochondrial DNA in estimating a phylogenetic tree among human, bovine and murids (mouse and rat) with chicken as an outgroup. It turned out that Dayhoff model is the most appropriate model among the alternatives in approximating the amino acid substitutions of proteins coded for in mitochondrial DNA. In spite of the presence of the complete sequence data of mitochondrial genomes, we could not resolve the trichotomy among human, bovine and murids, probably because the time length separating two branching events among these three lines was short and because chicken is too distant from mammals to be used as an outgroup. It was suggested that the average substitution rate of amino acids coded for in mitochondrial DNA is lower along the bovine line than those along the human or murid lines. Advantages of amino acid sequence analysis over nucleotide sequence analysis in phylogenetic study were discussed.