Crystal Structure ofBovine Cu,Zn Superoxide Dismutase at … · Structure of Cu,ZnSuperoxide...

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Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 72, No. 4, pp. 1349-1353, April 1975 Crystal Structure of Bovine Cu,Zn Superoxide Dismutase at 3 A Resolution: Chain Tracing and Metal Ligands (erythrocuprein/x-ray crystallography/beta structure) JANE S. RICHARDSON*, KENNETH A. THOMASt, BYRON H. RUBINtj, AND DAVID C. RICHARDSONt *Department of Anatomy, and tDepartment of Biochemistry, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27710 Communicated by Charles Tanford, January 24, 1976 ABSTRACT An electron density map at 3 A resolution has been calculated for Cu2+,Zn2+ superoxide dismutase from bovine erythrocytes, and the course of the main chain has been traced. The dominant structural feature is an 8- stranded barrel of antiparallel a-pleated sheet. There is one very short helical section and two long loops of non- repetitive structure. The Cu and Zn are bound between the loops and one side of the 8 barrel and are about 6 A apart, with a common histidine ligand. The Cu has four histidine ligands in a somewhat distorted square plane, and the Zn has three histidines and an aspartate in ap- proximately tetrahedral arrangement. The two coppers of a dimer are about 34 A apart. The two subunits have essentially the same conformation and have an extensive contact area that mainly involves hydrophobic side chain interactions. The overall folding pattern of the polypep- tide chain is very similar to that of an immunoglobulin domain. Superoxide dismutases, which catalyze the dismutation of the 02 - radical to molecular oxygen and hydrogen peroxide (1), are found in all of the oxygen-utilizing organisms so far examined (2). These enzymes have been implicated in protec- tion against a variety of types of damage, including the toxic- ity of hyperbaric oxygen (3), the toxicity of streptonigrin (4), peroxidation of lipids (5, 6), DNA damage (7), erythrocyte lysis (8), etc. The cytoplasms of eukaryotic organisms contain a superoxide dismutase which is a dimer with a subunit molecular weight of about 16,000 containing one catalytic Cu and one Zn per subunit (2). Both prokaryotes (9) and mitochondria (10) contain Mn superoxide dismutases which are related to each other in amino-acid sequence but unrelated to the CuZn enzyme (11). The crystallization (12) and low-resolution x-ray structure (13) of the bovine erythrocyte CuZn superoxide dismutase have been reported previously from this laboratory. The crystals have two of the dimeric molecules per asymmetric unit. The current paper describes the production and interpretation of an electron density map at 3 1 resolution. METHODS The methods of crystallization, heavy-atom derivative prep- aration, data collection, data reduction, phasing, and prepa- ration of electron density maps were all as described previ- ously (13) except in the following ways. Decomposition Scaling. The scaling corrections applied to allow for crystal decomposition were found to be a fairly smooth function of both time and 20. In each 20 range (typ- ically 10) nine intense reflections, well distributed in 0 and x (0 and x are Eulerian cradle coordinates for the 4-circle dif- fractometer), were chosen as decomposition standards. All sets of such standards were measured before and after data collec- tion, and several sets of decomposition standards at appro- priate 20 were measured after each shell of data. If those standards had fallen by more than 10%, data collection skipped to as low a 20 as necessary to reach a range with acceptable decomposition values. Backgrounds. For the 3 X data, correction was made for the 0 dependence of the background. Above about 50 in 29, the backgrounds were independent of x, but they showed a sy- tematic o dependence that approximately followed the m curve of the absorption correction in shape and position but with an amplitude between 0.2 and 0.5 times as great. Backgrounds were measured as a function of 20 at 0 values near the region of maximum transmission for the absorption curve. Some back- ground measurements were made at other 0 values to check the shape of the + dependence curve and to estimate what fraction (R) it was of the absorption 0 dependence. During data reduction, for each reflection a preliminary background was interpolated from the 20 curve and an empirical absorp- tion correction including projection angle effects (14) was evaluated. The preliminary background was corrected by R times the absorption correction and subtracted from the raw intensity; the full absorption correction was applied to the resulting peak intensity. Refinement of Heavy Atom Positions. The five heavy atom derivatives used to produce the current 3 A electron density map are the same ones described for the low-resolution work (13), but at least some additional data were included for each. The outer third of the reflections in this map were phased from the 2-chloromercuri-3-methoxypropyl-urea derivative alone, using anomalous dispersion. Starting with the parameters from the 5.5 A resolution results, several least squares cycles refining FH observed versus FH calculated were done on each derivative. One mercuri-urea and one PtCl42- crystal were refined separately because of atypical heavy atom occupan- cies. Table 1 summarizes the range of data included from each derivative, the number of crystals, the number of heavy atom sites, and the residual from refinement. Photographic Production of Minimaps. The contouring program (George N. Reeke's GNRFOUR program), which produces printed output, was set up with successive contour levels alternating very dense characters with blanks or very 1349 t Present address: Cancer Research Institute, Fox Chase, Philadelphia, Pa. 19111. Downloaded by guest on August 22, 2020

Transcript of Crystal Structure ofBovine Cu,Zn Superoxide Dismutase at … · Structure of Cu,ZnSuperoxide...

Page 1: Crystal Structure ofBovine Cu,Zn Superoxide Dismutase at … · Structure of Cu,ZnSuperoxide Dismutase at 3OA 1351 FIG. 2. Stereo photograph of a wire model (16) of the poly- peptide

Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USAVol. 72, No. 4, pp. 1349-1353, April 1975

Crystal Structure of Bovine Cu,Zn Superoxide Dismutase at 3 A Resolution:Chain Tracing and Metal Ligands

(erythrocuprein/x-ray crystallography/beta structure)

JANE S. RICHARDSON*, KENNETH A. THOMASt, BYRON H. RUBINtj, AND DAVID C. RICHARDSONt*Department of Anatomy, and tDepartment of Biochemistry, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27710

Communicated by Charles Tanford, January 24, 1976

ABSTRACT An electron density map at 3 A resolutionhas been calculated for Cu2+,Zn2+ superoxide dismutasefrom bovine erythrocytes, and the course ofthe main chainhas been traced. The dominant structural feature is an 8-stranded barrel of antiparallel a-pleated sheet. There isone very short helical section and two long loops of non-repetitive structure. The Cu and Zn are bound betweenthe loops and one side of the 8 barrel and are about 6 Aapart, with a common histidine ligand. The Cu has fourhistidine ligands in a somewhat distorted square plane,and the Zn has three histidines and an aspartate in ap-proximately tetrahedral arrangement. The two coppersof a dimer are about 34 A apart. The two subunits haveessentially the same conformation and have an extensivecontact area that mainly involves hydrophobic side chaininteractions. The overall folding pattern of the polypep-tide chain is very similar to that of an immunoglobulindomain.

Superoxide dismutases, which catalyze the dismutation of the02- radical to molecular oxygen and hydrogen peroxide (1),are found in all of the oxygen-utilizing organisms so farexamined (2). These enzymes have been implicated in protec-tion against a variety of types of damage, including the toxic-ity of hyperbaric oxygen (3), the toxicity of streptonigrin (4),peroxidation of lipids (5, 6), DNA damage (7), erythrocytelysis (8), etc. The cytoplasms of eukaryotic organismscontain a superoxide dismutase which is a dimer with a subunitmolecular weight of about 16,000 containing one catalyticCu and one Zn per subunit (2). Both prokaryotes (9) andmitochondria (10) contain Mn superoxide dismutases whichare related to each other in amino-acid sequence but unrelatedto the CuZn enzyme (11).The crystallization (12) and low-resolution x-ray structure

(13) of the bovine erythrocyte CuZn superoxide dismutasehave been reported previously from this laboratory. Thecrystals have two of the dimeric molecules per asymmetric unit.The current paper describes the production and interpretationof an electron density map at 3 1 resolution.

METHODSThe methods of crystallization, heavy-atom derivative prep-aration, data collection, data reduction, phasing, and prepa-ration of electron density maps were all as described previ-ously (13) except in the following ways.

Decomposition Scaling. The scaling corrections applied toallow for crystal decomposition were found to be a fairly

smooth function of both time and 20. In each 20 range (typ-ically 10) nine intense reflections, well distributed in 0 and x(0 and x are Eulerian cradle coordinates for the 4-circle dif-fractometer), were chosen as decomposition standards. All setsof such standards were measured before and after data collec-tion, and several sets of decomposition standards at appro-priate 20 were measured after each shell of data. If thosestandards had fallen by more than 10%, data collectionskipped to as low a 20 as necessary to reach a range withacceptable decomposition values.

Backgrounds. For the 3 X data, correction was made for the0 dependence of the background. Above about 50 in 29, thebackgrounds were independent of x, but they showed a sy-tematic o dependence that approximately followed the m curveof the absorption correction in shape and position but with anamplitude between 0.2 and 0.5 times as great. Backgroundswere measured as a function of 20 at 0 values near the region ofmaximum transmission for the absorption curve. Some back-ground measurements were made at other 0 values to checkthe shape of the + dependence curve and to estimate whatfraction (R) it was of the absorption 0 dependence. Duringdata reduction, for each reflection a preliminary backgroundwas interpolated from the 20 curve and an empirical absorp-tion correction including projection angle effects (14) wasevaluated. The preliminary background was corrected by Rtimes the absorption correction and subtracted from the rawintensity; the full absorption correction was applied to theresulting peak intensity.

Refinement of Heavy Atom Positions. The five heavy atomderivatives used to produce the current 3 A electron densitymap are the same ones described for the low-resolution work(13), but at least some additional data were included for each.The outer third of the reflections in this map were phased fromthe 2-chloromercuri-3-methoxypropyl-urea derivative alone,using anomalous dispersion. Starting with the parametersfrom the 5.5 A resolution results, several least squares cyclesrefining FH observed versus FH calculated were done on eachderivative. One mercuri-urea and one PtCl42- crystal wererefined separately because of atypical heavy atom occupan-cies. Table 1 summarizes the range of data included from eachderivative, the number of crystals, the number of heavy atomsites, and the residual from refinement.

Photographic Production of Minimaps. The contouringprogram (George N. Reeke's GNRFOUR program), whichproduces printed output, was set up with successive contourlevels alternating very dense characters with blanks or very

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FIG. 1. Photograph of a portion of the crystallographic-sectionminimap of Cu,Zn superoxide dismutase. Glass sheets with tapemarking the main chain are included for half of an asymmetricunit, but only five of the Kodalith contour sheets are in place.The round, black markers are on crystallographic 2-fold axes.

light characters, so that the overall appearance resembleddrawn contours. The printout for each map section was photo-graphed onto high-contrast 35mm copy film and enlargementswere printed on 8 X 10 inch (20 X 25 cm) sheets of clearKodalith graphic arts film. A slight brownish tinge to thebackground was removed by washing briefly in a solution ofFarmer's reducer.The contour sheets were taped by one edge to 8 X 10 inch

single-weight window glass. Pieces of '/16 inch (1.6 mm) widechart tape were applied to the glass to mark the main chain.After the main chain had been traced, the contour sheetscould be flipped to one side and the stack of glass contained arough backbone model in tape. Fig. 1 shows such a stack forabout half the asymmetric unit, with just five of the contoursheets in place at a level where several strands of antiparallel (3structure lie approximately in the plane of the sheets for allfour subunits.

Averaged, General-Plane Map. About 50 unambiguouslyequivalent positions for a-carbons, side chains, and the metalswere measured from the minimap for all four subunits in theasymmetric unit. The angles of the noncrystallographic2-fold axes were varied to minimize for each dimer the depar-ture from exact 2-fold relationship of the 50 pairs of pointsdescribed above. For each subunit, a transformation matrixwas determined which placed the dimer center at the origin,the local 2-fold axis along y, and the subunit center on the z

axis. The four transformation matrices were applied to the

TABLE 1. Summary of heavy atom derivatives used

Numberi of

Number Resolution heavy Least-Heavy atom of range of atom squaresderivative crystals data sites residual*

2-Chloromercuri-3-methoxypropylurea 4 to 3 12 0.40

IrCl62- 4 to 4.9, and4to3.4 8 0.59

IrCl62- plus PtCh2- 1 to 4 24 0.51PtCl42- 3 to 4.6 21 0.47Hg for Zn 1 to 5.2 8 0.375

* Residual = ZlFHobserved - FHcalculatedl/2FHobserved,where FH refers to the structure factor of the heavy atom con-tribution.

relevant portions of the numerical output from the crystallo-graphic-section electron density map (which is sectionedperpendicular to the crystallographic b axis). After localinterpolation to grid points 1 A apart, the four subunit mapswere averaged.

Chain Tracing. The course of the polypeptide chain wasfirst traced on the crystallographic-section minimap, which isat a scale of 0.1 inch/A. All four noncrystallographicallyequivalent subunits were compared, especially to resolveambiguities in the connectivity. For a number of stretches ofextended chain a tentative category was assigned to each sidegroup on the basis of its size, shape, and environment. Goodmatches to each of these lists were located in the amino-acidsequence (15) by checking regions for which (3 structure wasstrongly favored in secondary structure predictions§. Theintervening portions of the chain were then also matched tothe sequence. The chain tracing was confirmed on the averagedelectron density map, and several changes were made inassignment of residue position.

RESULTS

The Electron Density Map at 3 A Resolution. The CuZnsuperoxide dismutase map is of sufficiently good quality topermit chain tracing at this resolution, although there are agood many noise peaks in the solvent regions. Many of theside groups show characteristic shapes, and sonre of the car-bonyl oxygens show identifiable bumps. The metal sites wereidentified primarily by their patterns of multiple connectivityto the densities of neighboring chains. The Zn site is the highestpeak in each subunit and coincides with the major site of theHg-for-Zn substitution. The Cu site is the next highest peak,at or above the height of the largest protein peaks. Thesubunit boundary is clear, even at the contact around the local2-fold axis. On the averaged map the main chain is mucheasier to follow, although the side group shapes are notnoticeably better.Within any one subunit there are, on the average, one or

two places where the main chain continuity is broken andthree or four close contacts where the connectivity is ambigu-ous; essentially all of these problems were resolvable either by

§ The predictions were made by William Krigbaum and Sara P.Knutton of the Department of Chemistry, Duke University.

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Structure of Cu,Zn Superoxide Dismutase at 3 OA 1351

FIG. 2. Stereo photograph of a wire model (16) of the poly-peptide backbone of the Cu,Zn superoxide dismutase subunit,with the metals and their ligands and the disulfide bridge indi-cated. The view of the Cu (left-hand ball) is from its solvent-accessible side.

comparison among the four subunits or on the averaged map.

However, even on the averaged map there are several cross

connections at a high contour level, including the disulfide anda salt link between Arg 77 and Asp 99; therefore, it might nothave been possible to trace the chain unambiguously at thisresolution without knowledge of the amino-acid sequence.

Considering the agreement among noncrystallographicallyrelated subunits and the excellent fit to the sequence, theoverall folding pattern described here is quite certain; how-ever, there are likely to be local errors because of confusionbetween the density due to side groups and that due either tocarbonyl oxygens, noise, or solvent peaks.

Backbone Coordinates. Coordinates for the a-carbons,metals, and some selected side groups were measured from theaveraged map and two complete and two partial sets were

measured from the four subunits in the asymmetric unit on thecrystallographic-section minimap. All four sets of measure-

ments were transformed to a common coordinate system forcomparison. Regions that showed discrepancies were re-

examined on the individual maps, and it always provedpossible to make a consistent interpretation on all of themaps. For the five final coordinate sets, root mean square

errors are 0.9 A or less. The averaged a-carbon coordinatesare being published elsewhere (29).

Identity of the Subunits. The differences between the fournoncrystallographically equivalent subunits in the asym-

metric unit of the crystal can be tabulated in detail only athigher resolution. However, it is clear at this stage thatchanges in backbone conformation are minor. It also appears

that most, and perhaps all, differences in side chain positionare due to nonequivalent crystal packing environments. Nodifferences have been seen at the subunit contact around thelocal 2-fold axis. Therefore, from examination at this resolu-tion, it seems likely that the two subunits of a Cu2+,Zn2+superoxide dismutase dimer in solution would be exactly, or

very closely, equivalent in conformation.

Overall Structure. Fig. 2 is a stereo photograph of a wirebackbone model of the. bovine Cu,Zn superoxide dismutasesubunit, and Fig. 3 is a simplified schematic drawing of thestructure. The dominant feature is a large cylindrical barrelmade up of eight extended chains of entirely antiparallel ,structure; it contains about 75 residues (50% of the back-bone). The interior of the , barrel is packed with hydrophobicside chains. The barrel is somewhat flattened in cross section;the average distance between main chains across it is 12 or 13X in the shorter direction and 16 or 17 X in the longer direc-

FIG. 3. Simplified schematic drawing, in stereo, of the struc-ture shown in Fig. 2. The subunit has been turned 90°, puttingthe barrel of , structure at the top.

tion. The half of the g barrel toward the outside of the subunitis very regular; the four chains on that side have a relativelylow amount of twist (about 100 per residue, right handed, asdefined along the direction of the chains) and are withinhydrogen-bonding distance of one another for as much as nineor 10 residues. The less regular, more twisted, half of the #barrel is almost entirely internal to the subunit; that sidecontributes four ligands to the metals and one end to thedisulfide bridge. The j3 structure is diagrammed in Fig. 4.The rest of the structure of the subunit is made up of two

long loops of nonrepetitive structure. Each of the loops beginsand ends in two adjacent chains on the less regular side of the ,barrel. The first such loop (residues 48-79) has two distincthalves. The first half, the "disulfide loop", has its end heldback against the barrel by the disulfide bridge and participatesextensively in the subunit contact. The second, quite hydro-philic, half makes a figure eight shape and contributes three

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FIG. 4. Diagram showing the eight strands of 6 sheet andtheir topological connectivity. The barrel is spread flat andshown from the outside, and the C-terminal strand is repeatedat the top to show its position relative to the N-terminal strand.Those residues which probably participate in the js-sheet hydro-gen bonding are shown in heavy zigzag lines; however, there arenot hydrogen bonds between all residues shown opposite oneanother. When the line zigzags downward, the correspondingside group in the structure points toward the interior of thebarrel. Circles mark the Zn ligands and Xs the Cu ligands.

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FIG. 5. Stereo drawing of a Cu,Zn superoxide dismutasedimer molecule, viewed down the local 2-fold axis. The a-carbonsare shown as solid circles for one subunit and open circles for theother. Retraced from plots produced by Carroll Johnson's OR-TEP program.

ligands to the Zn. The second long loop (residues 119-141),also very hydrophilic, is the exposed "external loop" whichwas especially prominent at low resolution (13) and can beseen at the far right in Fig. 2.The most certain piece of a-helix is in the external loop

and is 1 or 1 /2 turns long. There are two other places in thesubunit where there may be a single helical-type hydrogenbond, but at this resolution it is unclear whether the residuesinvolved are really in a-helical conformation. The helix con-

tent, therefore, is low: between 3% and 8%.

Subunit Contact. The relationship of the two subunits to oneanother is shown in Fig. 5. The contact area across the local2-fold axis is broad and closely fitted. It involves part of theoutside surface of the barrel, the last few residues at the Cterminal, and the disulfide loop. It consists principally ofhydrophobic side chain interactions: there are at most twomain chain and perhaps two or three side chain hydrogen bondsbetween subunits, while there are 12 to 14 hydrophobic sidegroups from each subunit that are apparently in van derWaals contact. Val 146 and Ile 111 both interact with theirapproach between main chains, Gly 49 and Gly 112 of one

subunit are opposite Gly 148 of the other subunit.

Copper and Zinc. The two Cu atoms on opposite subunitswithin the superoxide dismutase dimer are approximately 34A apart. The Cu and Zn on a single subunit are about 6apart; between them is the imidazole ring of His 61, to whichboth metals appear liganded' The protein ligands to the Cuare His 44, His 46, His 61, and His 118, arranged in what isprobably a slightly distorted square plane. One of the axialdirections of the Cu is quite wide open to solvent access. Theprotein ligands to the Zn are His 61, His 69, His 78, and Asp81, in approximately tetrahedral arrangement. Almost all themetal ligands have potential hydrogen-bonding groups posi-tioned close enough to form a network of interactions in a

second shell out from the Cu and Zn. The ligand geometriesaround both the metals, and also the histidine ligand sharedbetween them, have extremely close analogs in crystalstructures of Cu-imidazole and Zn-imidazole complexes (17).

Positions of Particular Side Groups and Heavy Atom Sites.

The bovine Cu,Zn superoxide dismutase has a high glycinecontent (25 out of the 151 residues). Nine of these glycines are

at sharp corners, although only one or two of them could betype II tight turns (18) where glycine is essential. Fourteenglycines are in the barrel or its turns, six of them in positionswhere a side chain would point into the interior of the barrel.There are three glycines at a close approach between mainchains across the subunit contact.The prolines are all at the surface, and all but one are at

sharp bends in the backbone direction. The single tyrosine isexposed to solvent.Many of the specific residues inside the (3 barrel can be

identified from the diagram in Fig. 4. They include seven ofthe 15 valines, six of the nine isoleucines, five of the eightleucines, five of the nine alanines, two of the four phenyl-alanines, the single methionine, and the single free sulfhydryl*(Cys 6). The SH is not completely inaccessible, however,because the mercuri-urea (as well as the Hg for Zn) derivativehas a site that binds at the surface of the barrel in the subunit-contact region, next to the internal SH group.The disulfide bridge is partially exposed, and one of the

PtCh42- sites is next to it. His 19 extends into the solvent, andthere is a PtCl42- site on either side of it, probably withmutually exclusive binding. The major site of the Hg for Znsubstitution is less than 1 A from the Zn position as seen on theelectron density map. There is a mercuri-urea site next to His78, one of the Zn ligands. The major IrC82- site apparentlyincludes Thr 56 and Arg 141, two of the side groups lining thecavity that provides solvent access to the Cu.

DISCUSSION

Comparisons with Earlier Work on Superoxide Dismutase.All of the features of this structure that were interpretable at5.5 A resolution (13) have been confirmed. These include theoverall shape of the molecule, the location of the local 2-foldaxes, the location of the Zn, the large barrel of antiparallel (3structure, and the absence of any extensive stretches of helix.The agreement of the structure described here with the

amino-acid sequence (15) and disulfide location (19) isexcellent. However, at this resolution and without a skeletalmodel having been fit to the map, the chemical sequenceevidence should be considered more reliable than the x-rayconfirmation of it.The subunit association is very strong, and its stability is

influenced by the disulfide bond although the disulfide doesnot directly link the subunits (19); in the 3-dimensionalstructure the subunit contact is seen to be very extensive, andthe disulfide is strategically placed to stabilize a loop thatcontributes a large fraction of the subunit contact area.

Analysis of optical rotatory dispersion, circular dichroism,and infrared spectra (20) has indicated 0-15% a-helix and20-40% P structure, probably antiparallel. The best estimatefrom the x-ray results is that about 5% of the residues are

a-helical and about 45% are in the (3 conformation, all anti-parallel.The Cu and Zn are bound very tightly, and their presence

contributes greatly to the stability of the protein (21); it is,therefore, reasonable to find that the metals are tightly cagedby ligands from three strands of the ( barrel and one of theloops. Electron paramagnetic resonance spectra indicated at

least three nitrogen ligands to the Cu in a square plane (22)and photooxidation protection experiments suggested histi-dine nitrogens (23); four histidine ligands to the Cu are seen inthe x-ray structure, approximately square planar. There was

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Structure of Cu,Zn Superoxide Dismutase at 3 A 1353

also evidence, from the degree of interaction between the Cuand substitutions at the Zn site, that the metals are five or 6 Aapart (24); the Cu and Zn peaks on the 3 X electron densitymap are about 6 X apart.When one considers the proximity of the Cu and Zn and the

circumstance that they share a ligand, it is surprising thatCu2+ alone can restore between 20% and 80% of the catalyticactivity to the inactive apo-enzyme (1, 25).

Comparison with Other Protein Structures. Examples of ,sheets (either purely or predominantly antiparallel) that formmore or less closed cylinders are common; the classic examplesare the two 6-stranded barrels in chymotrypsin (26). Thestructure of prealbumin consists almost entirely of an 8-stranded , barrel which very closely resembles in size andshape the one described above for superoxide dismutase, butthe pattern of topological connectivity is completely different(27).The most striking comparison, however, is with the basic

folding pattern of an immunoglobulin structural domain(28), which consists of a 7-stranded barrel (or sandwich) of ,structure. If the N-terminal 8 strand in the superoxide dis-mutase barrel is ignored, the rest of the topological connectiv-ity is identical for these two functionally different proteins,and the two long loops of the superoxide dismutase structurecome at places equivalent to hypervariable region loops in theimmunoglobulin structure. (The diagram in Fig. 4 above'may be compared with Fig. 1 of ref. 28.) A detailed discussionof this comparison is being published elsewhere.

We would like to thank Robert Hill and Howard Steinman ofthe Duke Biochemistry Department for choosing this form ofsuperoxide dismutase as the subject of their sequence work andfor providing us with the results as soon as they were obtained;Joel Sussman of the Duke Biochemistry Department for helpingdevelop the photographic technique for producing minimaps; andDavid Davies of the National Institutes of Health for workingout with us the comparison of the superoxide dismutase and in-munoglobulin structures. This research was supported by GrantGM-15000 from the National Institutes of Health. K.A.T. wassupported in part by National Institutes of Health BiochemistryTraining Grant GM-00233, and B.H.R. was supported in part byNational Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship GM-55428.

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