Biobanking of microorganisms from permafrost and glaciers of the Swiss Alps

The cold habitats of the Swiss Alps and the Arctic are undergoing change and are at risk of disappearing partially or completely with increasing global temperatures. Along with them, a poorly known diversity of microorganisms that have adapted to life in these supposedly hostile places. Therefore it is important to preserve this unknown microbial diversity. By cryopreserving approx. 1'500 microbial strains from these habitats, some of today's biodiversity can be preserved in biobanks. Here, we focus on the bioprospecting of Alpine and Polar microorganisms stored at long-term in the biobank to discover natural products that could be useful to us. This is especially relevant now, as these environments are among the most rapidly changing due to climate change. Over the past 20 years, we have collected soil, plastic and ice samples from a variety of Alpine and Polar environments. To bioprospect these ecosystems, we have followed two main approaches. The first involves searching our strains in the biobank for biosynthetic gene clusters, responsible for the production of secondary metabolites and genes related to plastic biodegradation by using tools that were developed for mining genomes for these gene clusters. The second approach involves a proof of concept to test of the selected strains in laboratory experiments for the abilities to produce antibiotic compounds and enzymes involved in plastic biodegradation. In both cases, our goal is to identify genes that may encode bioactive compounds or enzymes of interest—such as those with antimicrobial properties that could help us fight microbial infections and polymer degrading enzymes that might sustain a circular economy for plastic waste.