InterPro Database

Overview

InterPro is the EBI's integrated protein family, domain, and functional site database. It consolidates signatures from 13 member databases (Pfam, PANTHER, PIRSF, PRINTS, PROSITE, SMART, CDD, NCBIfam, and others) into unified InterPro entries, each describing a homologous superfamily, domain, family, repeat, or conserved site. The REST API at https://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/api/ is free and requires no authentication.

When to Use

• Identifying all domains and families present in a protein by UniProt accession (domain architecture)
• Searching for proteins that contain a specific domain or belong to a specific family
• Finding the taxonomic distribution of organisms that encode a given domain or family
• Cross-linking a domain to experimental 3D structures in the PDB
• Checking which source databases (Pfam, PANTHER, SMART, etc.) cover an InterPro entry
• Discovering InterPro entries by keyword (e.g., "kinase domain") when you do not yet know the accession
• For protein sequence retrieval, functional annotations (GO, pathways, active sites), and ID mapping use uniprot-protein-database
• For downloading domain-aligned sequences or building HMM profiles use Pfam directly; InterPro is the meta-layer

Prerequisites