Subcellular Distribution of NTL Transcription Factors in Arabidopsis thaliana

NAC with a transmembrane (TM) motif1-like (NTL) transcription factors, containing three regions: the N-terminal NAC domain (ND), the middle regulation region (RR), and the C-terminal TM domain, belong to the tail-anchored proteins. Although these NTLs play numerous essential roles in plants, their subcellular distribution and the mechanism of translocation into the nucleus (NU) remain unclear. In this study, we found that most of the full-length NTLs were localized in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), with the exception of NTL11 and NTL5, which were restricted to the NU. Furthermore, we found that NTL11 contains a TM domain, whereas NTL5 does not. The ND of all of the NTLs was responsible for nuclear localization in plants. After truncation of the TM domain, NTL8_NR, NTL10_NR and NTL13_NR localized in the cytoplasm (CT) and NU, and other NTL_NRs were only localized in the NU, suggesting that the RR of NTL8, NTL10 and NTL13 contains some inhibitory region to mask the nuclear localization signal sequence in the ND domain and permit their diffusion between CT and NU. Furthermore, the N-terminus of NTL11 was translocated to the NU, but the C-terminus was degraded in Arabidopsis mesophyll protoplasts. The chimeric construct of NTL11_ND with NTL10_RR and TM domain (11ND-10RT) was localized exclusively in the ER, and not in the NU. However, 10ND-11RT was found mainly in the NU. Our results indicated that the TM domain is essential for NTL targeting the ER and the N-terminal fragment, including ND and RR, is translocated into the NU after activation through proteolytic cleavage events upon stimulation by internal and external environmental signals.