Conformational changes of active site of copper zinc superoxide dismutase can be detected sensitively by electron-transfer reaction.

The electron-transfer (ET) reaction between Fe(CN)6(4-) and copper zinc superoxide dismutase (CuZn-SOD) occurs at the active site of the enzyme. The ET parameters which are sensitive to the denaturation have been used to determine the conformational changes of the active site induced by guanidine hydrochloride and thermal denaturation. The decreases of ET rates for all the denatured enzyme samples reflect the collapse of the active cavity of enzyme in the unfolding processes. The interesting changes of ET amplitude for the enzyme denatured at different pH values suggest that electrostatic interaction plays an important role in the conformational changes of active site. From the results of the kinetic analyses, it is concluded that the conformational changes of the active site are parallel with the inactivation.