IDPfun is an international consortium aiming to extend our knowledge on the functions of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). Starting from available state of the art computational tools and databases, which have been mostly developed by IDPfun participants, it aims to drive a new level of IDP characterization.

---

IDPfun will create a collaborative environment for research on novel ways to detect and characterize different IDP phenomena in their evolutionary context. It will develop an ontology and classification facilitating the comprehension of IDP complexity and aims to understand IDP functional mechanisms.

Intrinsically disordered proteins, characterized by high conformational variability and interaction promiscuity, defy the classic protein structure-function paradigm. IDPs cover almost half of the residues in Eukaryotic proteomes. Growing evidence suggests that IDPs, interacting with multiple partners, are major players in cellular regulation and involved in numerous human diseases. Computational methods have contributed to the identification of IDPs from sequence and recently published curated IDP databases provide a starting point. However, functional knowledge for IDPs remains very limited.