Virtuelle (Nano) Welten PDB Molecule of the Month 94: Superoxide Dismutase

Heavy Metal

All organisms appear to have one form of SOD or another, but they have taken several approaches to the challenge. These enzymes all use different metal ions to perform the electron-shuffling reaction. Our own cells build three types of SOD. Copper,zinc SOD (shown here from PDB entry 1sos) floats around inside cells to scavenge any superoxide, and a similar one is made with a sticky tail that glues it to structures outside of cells. A separate manganese SOD (PDB entry 1msd) is used in our mitochondria. Bacteria build a variety of different SOD enzymes, including an iron SOD (PDB entry 3sdp) and even an unusual nickel SOD (PDB entry 1q0d).