As a special species of avian, Peking duck is often used as a model for exploring effective factors against cardio-cerebrovascular diseases, and therefore investigations of antioxidant enzymes including superoxide dismutase are intriguing. By using 3'-RACE with a gene-specific primer, a cDNA encoding duck Cu,Zn SOD was amplified from the total RNA extracted from Peking duck liver. Three free cysteine residues are found in the deduced amino acid sequence of duck SOD, among which Cys153 at the carbonyl-terminal is a distinctive feature. Production with a high yield of recombinant duck Cu,Zn SOD was achieved in Escherichia coli after the reconstituted expression vector pET-3a-dSOD was transformed into the bacterial strain BL21(DE3)pLysS. After two steps of anion exchange chromatography, a great quantity of the purified enzyme (100mg/L fermented culture) with an enzymatic activity comparable to that of native duck and bovine SOD was finally obtained. Duck SOD is a homodimer with 153 residues for each subunit, The molecular mass of the recombinant enzyme is 15,540.0 Da measured by mass spectrum, which well coincides with the estimated size of the sequence but significantly differs from that of the native counterpart. Five charge isomers were observed on isoelectricfocusing (IEF), The most interesting observation is that the thermal stability of duck SOD is much lower than that of the bovine enzyme as revealed by irreversible heat inactivation at 70 degreesC. These properties are discussed in relation to the distinctive free Cys residues in duck Cu,Zn SOD. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.