The Wikipedia page on zinc fingers states that such domains exist; salt bridges reportedly take the place of zinc. However, there is no citation!
The only example of a natural zinc-stabilized DNA binding domain that can dispense with zinc binding that I have found is Ros from Agrobacterium tumefaciens (see papers from the Pedone laboratory). This domain is stabilized by a hydrogen bond network and not "salt bridges", however, so I assume Wikipedia was thinking of some other example.
I am not only interested in ββα Cys2His2 classical zinc fingers - gag knuckles, treble clefs, et cetera - these are all of interest to me.
TFIIB is the best example of a natural zinc finger that doesn’t require zinc. See Reddi and Gibney.
Dahiyat and Mayo did a rational design/screen and isolated a sequence that folds into the ββα fold in the absence of Zn2+.
Prior to that, Imperiali also managed to create sequences that forms this structure, but they employ non-natural amino acids.
Finally, the zinc finger of BRCA1 has some structure in the apo form.
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