The Potent PHL4 Transcription Factor Effector Domain Contains Significant Disorder.

Transcription factor proteins upregulate genes and are essential to concerted biological response to environmental conditions like stress or low nutrient availability. In this work, we show the activating effector domain of the potent PHL4 transcription factor protein is primarily disordered, without well-defined secondary structure, and that the isolated effector domain behaves similarly in isolation as it does in the full-length protein. Our finding is consistent with protein transcription factors often having regions of disorder within their functional activator domains.