It should also be mentioned that the two methods aren’t mutually exclusive, and there’s a ton of synergy between using the old ways (x-ray crystallography and cryo-em) and using the new way (AlphaFold). Because even when you measure the protein structure, the old ways only tell you the shape of the protein but not the skeletal structure of the protein (which is the actual important part), so to my knowledge, there’s a bit of finicking around to figure out how the protein folds into that shape. AlphaFold predicts how the protein folds, so you can cross reference that with the measured shape of the protein to better estimate where the protein skeleton is in the measured shape
It should also be mentioned that the two methods aren’t mutually exclusive, and there’s a ton of synergy between using the old ways (x-ray crystallography and cryo-em) and using the new way (AlphaFold). Because even when you measure the protein structure, the old ways only tell you the shape of the protein but not the skeletal structure of the protein (which is the actual important part), so to my knowledge, there’s a bit of finicking around to figure out how the protein folds into that shape. AlphaFold predicts how the protein folds, so you can cross reference that with the measured shape of the protein to better estimate where the protein skeleton is in the measured shape