Cold desert soil microbiomes thrive despite severe moisture and nutrient limitations. In Eastern Antarctic soils, bacterial primary production is supported by trace gas oxidation and the light-independent RuBisCO form IE. This study aims to determine if atmospheric chemosynthesis is widespread within Antarctic, Arctic and Tibetan cold deserts, to identify the breadth of trace gas chemosynthetic taxa and to further characterize the genetic determinants of this process. H2 oxidation was ubiquitous, far exceeding rates reported to fulfill the maintenance needs of similarly structured edaphic microbiomes. Atmospheric chemosynthesis occurred globally, contributing significantly (p < 0.05) to carbon fixation in Antarctica and the high Arctic. Taxonomic and functional analyses were performed upon 18 cold desert metagenomes, 230 dereplicated medium-to-high-quality derived metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) and an additional 24,080 publicly available genomes. Hydrogenotrophic and carboxydotrophic growth markers were widespread. RuBisCO IE was discovered to co-occur alongside trace gas oxidation enzymes in representative Chloroflexota, Firmicutes, Deinococcota and Verrucomicrobiota genomes. We identify a novel group of high-affinity [NiFe]-hydrogenases, group 1m, through phylogenetics, gene structure analysis and homology modeling, and reveal substantial genetic diversity within RuBisCO form IE (rbcL1E), and high-affinity 1h and 1l [NiFe]-hydrogenase groups. We conclude that atmospheric chemosynthesis is a globally-distributed phenomenon, extending throughout cold deserts, with significant implications for the global carbon cycle and bacterial survival within environmental reservoirs.

Australian Antarctic Division Department of Environment Antarctic Conservation and Management Kingston TAS Australia

Center for Pan 3rd Pole Environment Lanzhou University Lanzhou 730000 China

Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics Department of Biochemistry Genetics and Microbiology University of Pretoria Pretoria 0002 South Africa

Department of Aquatic Microbial Ecology Institute of Hydrobiology Biology Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic České Budějovice Czech Republic

Key Laboratory of Alpine Ecology Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research Chinese Academy of Sciences 100101 Beijing China

School of Biological Sciences Monash University Clayton VIC 3800 Australia

School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences UNSW Sydney NSW 2052 Australia

School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences Australian Centre for Ecogenomics The University of Queensland St Lucia QLD 4072 Australia

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