Tolerance of an Antarctic Bacterium to Multiple Environmental Stressors.

A population of cold-tolerant Antarctic bacteria was screened for their ability to tolerate other environmental stress factors. Besides low temperature, they were predominantly found to be tolerant to alkali. Attempt was also made to postulate a genetic basis of their multistress-tolerance. Transposon mutagenesis of an isolate Pseudomonas syringae Lz4W was performed, and mutants with delayed growth at low temperature were further screened for sensitivity to some other stress factors. A number of multistress-sensitive mutants were isolated. The mutated gene in one of the mutants sensitive to low temperature, acid and alkali was found to encode citrate synthase. Possible role of citrate synthase in conferring multistress-tolerance was postulated.