Editing Mitochondrial DNA (section)

== Use in evolutionary biology and systematic biology ==
mtDNA is conserved across eukaryotic organisms given the critical role of mitochondria in [[cellular respiration]]. However, due to less efficient DNA repair (compared to nuclear DNA), it has a relatively high mutation rate (but slow compared to other DNA regions such as [[microsatellite]]s) which makes it useful for studying the evolutionary relationships—[[phylogeny]]—of organisms. Biologists can determine and then compare mtDNA sequences among different species and use the comparisons to build an [[evolutionary tree]] for the species examined.{{cn|date=November 2024}}

For instance, while most [[nuclear gene]]s are nearly identical between humans and [[chimpanzee]]s, their mitochondrial genomes are 9.8% different. Human and [[Western gorilla|gorilla]] mitochondrial genomes are 11.8% different, suggesting that humans may be more closely related to chimpanzees than gorillas.<ref>{{Cite journal |vauthors=Xu X, Arnason U |date=May 1996 |title=A complete sequence of the mitochondrial genome of the western lowland gorilla |url=https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/13/5/691/1083040 |url-status=live |journal=Molecular Biology and Evolution |volume=13 |issue=5 |pages=691–698 |doi=10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a025630 |pmid=8676744 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200804070759/https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/13/5/691/1083040 |archive-date=4 August 2020 |access-date=3 February 2020 |doi-access=free}}</ref>