Strain-Specific Features of Primary Metabolome Characteristic for Extremotolerant/Extremophilic Cyanobacteria Under Long-Term Storage

Abstract

Cyanobacteria isolated from extreme habitats are promising in biotechnology due to their high adaptability to unfavorable environments and their specific natural products. Therefore, these organisms are stored under a reduced light supply in multiple collections worldwide. However, it remains unclear whether these strains maintain constitutively expressed primary metabolome features associated with their unique adaptations. To address this question, a comparative analysis of primary metabolomes of twelve cyanobacterial strains from diverse extreme habitats was performed by a combined GC-MS/LC-MS approach. The results revealed that all these cyanobacterial strains exhibited clear differences in their patterns of primary metabolites. These metabolic differences were more pronounced for the strains originating from ecologically different extreme environments. Extremotolerant terrestrial and freshwater strains contained lower strain-specifically accumulated primary metabolites than extremophilic species from habitats with high salinity and alkalinity. The latter group of strains was highly diverse in amounts of specific primary metabolites. This might indicate essentially different molecular mechanisms and metabolic pathways behind the survival of the microorganisms in saline and alkaline environments. The identified strain-specific metabolites are discussed with respect to the metabolic processes that might impact maintaining the viability of cyanobacteria during their storage and indicate unique adaptations formed in their original extreme habitats.