Rezaei Zeinab, Amoozegar Mohammad Ali, Moghimi Hamid
Department of Microbiology, School of Biology, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, 1417864411, Iran.
Microb Cell Fact. 2025 Aug 14;24(1):184. doi: 10.1186/s12934-025-02817-7.
Hypersaline environments are ecologically, industrially, and scientifically important because they host unique extremophiles used in biotechnology, bioremediation, and enzyme production. These habitats are seriously threatened by three common contaminants: hydrocarbon pollutants, toxic metals, and microplastics. In particular, the remediation of hazardous substances under extreme conditions is challenging due to limited accessibility and bioavailability of pollutants, harsh physicochemical conditions, reduced microbial abundance and diversity, and instability of enzymes. Halophiles are extremophilic microorganisms that thrive in high-salt environments, exhibiting notable metabolic diversity and resilience, and play a critical role in overcoming these challenges. Their ability to degrade recalcitrant pollutants makes them valuable for bioremediation in contaminated hypersaline ecosystems. Advancements in engineering tools and synthetic biology have revolutionized halophile-based biotechnologies. Techniques like gene editing and recombinant DNA have facilitated the precise modification of halophiles, enabling them to efficiently target and degrade toxic compounds and significantly improve their bioremediation potential. Furthermore, with the rapid progress of omics approaches, identifying new halophilic microbes, their enzymes, and their metabolic pathways is now becoming possible. Despite these advances, challenges remain in optimizing genetically tractable strains, ensuring biosafety, and understanding microbial ecology for scalable, safe, and cost-effective applications. This review provides an overview of halophilic and halotolerant microorganisms, their habitat, and their unique adaptations to saline and hypersaline environments. Key pollutants threatening extreme environments, as well as the ability of halophiles to degrade them, are also discussed. Additionally, it highlights current challenges, including the introduction of engineered halophiles into natural ecosystems, scaling up bioprocesses, cost management, and regulatory concerns, and explains future perspectives to address these issues. Ultimately, it emphasizes the need for advanced research to fully harness the potential of halophiles in sustainable bioremediation.
高盐环境在生态、工业和科学领域都具有重要意义，因为其中栖息着用于生物技术、生物修复和酶生产的独特极端微生物。这些栖息地受到三种常见污染物的严重威胁：碳氢化合物污染物、有毒金属和微塑料。特别是在极端条件下修复有害物质具有挑战性，这是由于污染物的可及性和生物有效性有限、物理化学条件恶劣、微生物丰度和多样性降低以及酶的不稳定性。嗜盐菌是在高盐环境中茁壮成长的极端微生物，具有显著的代谢多样性和适应能力，在克服这些挑战中发挥着关键作用。它们降解难降解污染物的能力使其在受污染的高盐生态系统生物修复中具有重要价值。工程工具和合成生物学的进步彻底改变了基于嗜盐菌的生物技术。基因编辑和重组DNA等技术促进了对嗜盐菌的精确修饰，使其能够有效地靶向和降解有毒化合物，并显著提高其生物修复潜力。此外，随着组学方法的迅速发展，现在有可能识别新的嗜盐微生物、它们的酶及其代谢途径。尽管取得了这些进展，但在优化遗传易处理菌株、确保生物安全以及理解微生物生态学以实现可扩展、安全和具有成本效益的应用方面仍存在挑战。本综述概述了嗜盐和耐盐微生物、它们的栖息地以及它们对盐渍和高盐环境的独特适应性。还讨论了威胁极端环境的主要污染物以及嗜盐菌降解这些污染物的能力。此外，它强调了当前的挑战，包括将工程嗜盐菌引入自然生态系统、扩大生物过程规模、成本管理和监管问题，并阐述了解决这些问题的未来前景。最终，它强调了进行深入研究以充分发挥嗜盐菌在可持续生物修复中的潜力的必要性。
