Distances in hominidae family MTDNA from nucleotide genomic signals

The nucleotide genomic signal (NuGS) methodology allows computing the distance between various species in a family, or between individuals in the same species, starting from on the distance between homologous genes, or between conserved equivalent non-coding genomic regions. NuGSs, specifically nucleotide imbalance (N) and nucleotide pair imbalance (P) signals for the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), are used to evaluate at molecular level the distances among six extant and one fossil species of the Hominidae family. The areas encoding the 37 mitochondrial genes are well conserved for species in the same family, so that the distances between mtDNA genes are small. A surprising feature is the regularity of the variation of gene distance along the mtDNA sequence.