Cloning and functional characterization of the copper/zinc superoxide dismutase gene from the heavy-metal-tolerant yeast Cryptococcus liquefaciens strain N6.

The deep-sea yeast Cryptococcus liquefaciens strain N6 possesses high superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity and a high tolerance toward metal ions. To clarify the relationship between metal tolerance and SOD activity in this strain, we cloned the Cu/Zn SOD gene. This gene (Cl-SOD1) consists of 471 bp encoding 157 amino acids; the associated protein had 59.