“…In the Central Andean region in South America, high-altitude ecosystems (3500-6000 m asl) are distributed across Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru, in which poly-extremophilic microbes thrive under extreme environmental conditions (Albarracín et al, 2009;Albarracín, Gärtner, et al, 2016;Farías, 2020;Orellana et al, 2018;Vignale et al, 2021). Previous works proved the high tolerance profiles of these extremophiles to antibiotics, dryness, heavy-metal, arsenic, hypersalinity, and UV irradiation (Albarracín et al, 2009(Albarracín et al, , 2012Alonso-Reyes, Farias, et al, 2020;Belfiore et al, 2013;Dib et al, 2009;Flores et al, 2009;Kurth et al, 2015Kurth et al, , 2017Omar Federico Ordoñez et al, 2018;Orellana et al, 2018;Perez et al, 2020;Pérez et al, 2017a;Portero et al, 2019;Nicolas Rascovan et al, 2015;Rasuk et al, 2017;Saona et al, 2021;Zannier et al, 2019;. Moreover, various underlying mechanisms and cellular processes were identified that indicate how these indigenous microbes cope with these multiple stress conditions, thus presenting an interesting side-aspect of opening avenues of research for novel biotechnological applications.…”