GC content is found to be variable with different organisms, the process of which is envisaged to be contributed to by variation in selection, mutational bias, and biased recombination-associated DNA repair.
The average GC-content in human genomes ranges from 35% to 60% across 100-Kb fragments, with a mean of 41%. The GC-content of Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is 38%, and that of another common model organism, thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), is 36%. Because of the nature of the genetic code, it is virtually impossible for an organism to have a genome with a GC-content approaching either 0% or 100%. However, a species with an extremely low GC-content is Plasmodium falciparum (GC% = ~20%), and it is usually common to refer to such examples as being AT-rich instead of GC-poor.
Several mammalian species (e.g., shrew, microbat, tenrec, rabbit) have independently undergone a marked increase in the GC-content of their genes. These GC-content changes are correlated with species life-history traits (e.g., body mass or longevity) and genome size,  and might be linked to a molecular phenomenon called the GC-biased gene conversion.