A functional map of the human intrinsically disordered proteome

Abstract

Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) represent at least one-third of the human proteome and defy the established structure–function paradigm. Because IDRs often have limited positional sequence conservation, the functional classification of IDRs using standard bioinformatics is generally not possible. Here, we show that evolutionarily conserved molecular features of IDRs enable clustering of the human disordered proteome (IDRome) into a map with strong functional enrichments. We quantify how conserved IDR features correlate with functional terms and, for a subset of terms, provide proteome-wide predictions of annotations for IDRs. Further, we show that conserved features of IDRs can predict protein localization to different biomolecular condensates and underlie elevated intracluster connectivity in condensate-associated IDRs, as well as enrich for short-linear motif-binding domains among interaction partners. We highlight patterns of conservation in disordered proteins with unknown function and in clusters enriched for proteins encoded by disease-risk genes. Our map of the human IDR-ome should be a valuable resource that aids in the discovery of new IDR biology.