  Escherichia coli is one of many bacterial inhabitants found in human
intestines and any adaptation as a result of mutations may affect its host. A
commonly used technique employed to study these mutations is Restriction
Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) and is proceeded with a suitable distance
coefficient to quantify genetic differences between 2 samples. Dice is
considered a suitable distance coefficient in RFLP analyses, while others were
left unstudied in its suitability for use. Hence, this study aims to identify
substitutes for Dice. Experimental data was obtained by subculturing E. coli
for 72 passages in 8 different adaptation media and RFLP profiles analyzed
using 20 distance coefficients. Our results suggest that Dennis, Fossum,
Matching and Russel and Rao to work as well or better than Dice. Dennis,
Matching and Fossum coefficients had highest discriminatory abilities but are
limited by the lack of upper or lower boundaries. Russel and Rao coefficient is
highly correlated with Dice coefficient (r2 = 0.998), with both higher and
lower boundaries, suggesting that Russel and Rao coefficient can be used to
substitute Dice coefficient in studying genetic distances in E. coli.
