The Atacama Desert is the most arid desert on Earth, focus of important research activities related to microbial biodiversity studies. In this context, metabolic characterization of arid soil bacteria is crucial to understand their survival strategies under extreme environmental stress. We investigated whether strain-specific features of two Microbacterium species were involved in the metabolic ability to tolerate/ adapt to local variations within an extreme desert environment. Using an integrative systems biology approach we have carried out construction and comparison of genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs) of two Microbacterium sp., CGR1 and CGR2, previously isolated from physicochemically contrasting soil sites in the Atacama Desert. Despite CGR1 and CGR2 belong to different phylogenetic clades, metabolic pathways and attributes are highly conserved in both strains. However, comparison of the GEMs showed significant differences in the connectivity of specific metabolites related to pH tolerance and co 2 production. The latter is most likely required to handle acidic stress through decarboxylation reactions. We observed greater GEM connectivity within Microbacterium sp. CGR1 compared to CGR2, which is correlated with the capacity of CGR1 to tolerate a wider pH tolerance range. Both metabolic models predict the synthesis of pigment metabolites (β-carotene), observation validated by HPLC experiments. Our study provides a valuable resource to further investigate global metabolic adaptations of bacterial species to grow in soils with different abiotic factors within an extreme environment. In recent years, there has been increased interest in the study of Actinobacteria from desert areas. As noted by previous researchers, this class possess bacteria with a variety of attractive metabolic qualities that make them good candidates to survive in desert areas 1 , including their extensive metabolic capability to degrade and utilize compounds from nutrient poor environments and their ability to synthesize secondary metabolites and natural antibiotics 2. In fact, Actinobacteria is the dominant class present in desert locations 3 , and their ability to adapt to this kind of environment is the focus of intense research. For example, Lynch and collaborators found that over 98% of the lineages present in the vicinity of a volcano in the Atacama Desert corresponded to Actinobacteria, and that their metabolisms were adapted to utilize atmospheric gases present in this ecosystem 4. One genus that