The superoxide reductase from the early diverging eukaryote Giardia intestinalis

Unlike superoxide dismutases (SODs), superoxide reductases (SORs) eliminate superoxide anion (O2 o-) not through its dismutation, but via reduction to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in the presence of an electron donor. The microaerobic protist Giardia intestinalis, responsible for a common intestinal disease in humans, though lacking SOD and other canonical reactive oxygen species-detoxifying systems, is among the very few eukaryotes encoding a SOR yet identified. In this study, the recombinant SOR from Giardia (SORGi) was purified and characterized by pulse radiolysis and stopped-flow spectrophotometry. The protein, isolated in the reduced state, after oxidation by superoxide or hexachloroiridate(IV), yields a resting species (Tfinal) with Fe3+ ligated to glutamate or hydroxide depending on pH (apparent pKa=8.7). Although showing negligible SOD activity, reduced SORGi reacts with O2 o- with a pH-independent second-order rate constant k1=1.0×109 M-1 s-1 and yields the ferric-(hydro)peroxo intermediate T1; this in turn rapidly decays to the Tfinal state with pH-dependent rates, without populating other detectable intermediates. Immunoblotting assays show that SORGi is expressed in the disease-causing trophozoite of Giardia. We propose that the superoxide-scavenging activity of SOR in Giardia may promote the survival of this air-sensitive parasite in the fairly aerobic proximal human small intestine during infection.