Other ways to determine the way they are folded is to isolate the enzyme and to crystalise it and scatter Xrays through it. This is no mean feat, it takes a lot

Other ways to determine the way they are folded is to isolate the enzyme and to crystalise it and scatter Xrays through it. This is no mean feat, it takes a lot of time and a certain instinct (or brute force with a matrix of conditions) to pull off. Even if you manage to crystalise the protein, you need to check that it still performs the same function, otherwise you won't be getting the active structure. More recently NMR has been used, which gives information about the environment that the various nuclei occupy, and what their neighbors are. This has become more sophisticated over the last few years but only accounts for a small percentage of solved structures on the protein databank [0] [0] https://www.rcsb.org/ https://www.rcsb.org/