A simple stochastic model describing genomic evolution over time of GC content in microbial symbionts

An organism’s genomic base composition is usually summarized by its AT or GC content due to Chargaff’s parity laws. Variation in prokaryotic GC content can be substantial between taxa but is generally small within microbial genomes. This variation has been found to correlate with both phylogeny and environmental factors. Since novel single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within genomes are at least partially linked to the environment through...