Biosurfactant production under cold-saline stress is a strain specific trait independent from phylogeny and biosynthetic gene content
- 1Department of Extraterrestrial Ocean Systems, Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sanya, China
Abstract
Microbial genomes code for far more biosynthetic potential than a single cell typically expresses, but the environmental and cellular controls that determine whether the latent capacity is realised remain poorly understood. Biosurfactants, surface-active metabolites proposed to aid survival in cold and saline habitats, exemplify this gap: capacity is often inferred from genomes or detected chemically, but is rarely linked to the specific conditions that stimulate its production in the same organisms. Here we combine whole-genome sequencing, untargeted LC-MS/MS metabolomics, and quantitative surface-tension assays across 25 bacterial isolates isolated from the cold, hypersaline Qaidam Basin (a terrestrial analogue for ancient Mars) and contrasting marine environments. We show that biosurfactant production is not a fixed lineage trait but a regulated, strain-specific response that emerges under combined cold and salt stress. This response is structured into three tiers: genomic capacity defines the accessible chemical space; the genomic complement of pathway-regulator genes tracks responsiveness; strain-level physiological state determines realised output. Regulatory-gene content, rather than biosynthetic-cluster count, predicted surfactant production across strains. Production was amplified by low temperature and high salinity and showed little phylogenetic signal, with near-clonal strains differing in their stress-response. These findings reshape biochemical adaptation in extreme environments as a problem of conditional activation, not only of genomic potential, but of cellular systems that permit its expression, which requires looking beyond biosynthetic-gene content to the cellular factors that determine whether that potential is expressed.
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BibTeX
@misc{ullah2026biosurfactant,
title = {{Biosurfactant production under cold-saline stress is a strain specific trait independent from phylogeny and biosynthetic gene content}},
author = {H. Ullah and Z. Han and M. C. Y. Lau Vetter},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.19.760052},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.19.760052v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Biosurfactant production under cold-saline stress is a strain specific trait independent from phylogeny and biosynthetic gene content
AU - H. Ullah
AU - Z. Han
AU - M. C. Y. Lau Vetter
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/19
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.19.760052
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.19.760052v1
AB - Microbial genomes code for far more biosynthetic potential than a single cell typically expresses, but the environmental and cellular controls that determine whether the latent capacity is realised remain poorly understood. Biosurfactants, surface-active metabolites proposed to aid survival in cold and saline habitats, exemplify this gap: capacity is often inferred from genomes or detected chemically, but is rarely linked to the specific conditions that stimulate its production in the same organisms. Here we combine whole-genome sequencing, untargeted LC-MS/MS metabolomics, and quantitative surface-tension assays across 25 bacterial isolates isolated from the cold, hypersaline Qaidam Basin (a terrestrial analogue for ancient Mars) and contrasting marine environments. We show that biosurfactant production is not a fixed lineage trait but a regulated, strain-specific response that emerges under combined cold and salt stress. This response is structured into three tiers: genomic capacity defines the accessible chemical space; the genomic complement of pathway-regulator genes tracks responsiveness; strain-level physiological state determines realised output. Regulatory-gene content, rather than biosynthetic-cluster count, predicted surfactant production across strains. Production was amplified by low temperature and high salinity and showed little phylogenetic signal, with near-clonal strains differing in their stress-response. These findings reshape biochemical adaptation in extreme environments as a problem of conditional activation, not only of genomic potential, but of cellular systems that permit its expression, which requires looking beyond biosynthetic-gene content to the cellular factors that determine whether that potential is expressed.
ER -