Question about the active site structure of MnSOD?

Question

I am writing a huge term paper on MnSOD, and I can not find anything on how the metal is bound to it's coordinating ligands. Are these interactions covalent, electrostatic, or is the metal just "caged in"? If you have a source, I would greatly appriciate it.

Answer 1

The manganese is not just "caged in", but attached to definite specific atoms, which fine tune its oxidation/reduction behaviour, on which the enzyme reaction depends. The crystal structure of this enzyme is known, and it will show you which atoms are bonded to the manganese. Notice that the enzyme contains four separate units. This is a common feature of enzymes or other catalysts involved in reactions in which more than one electron is transferred.

Since this is a transition metal compound, the bonding is neither purely covalent nor purely ionic, but somewhere in between, as described by ligand field theory, which you will find described in College-level inorganic textbooks.

Good luck!