Think about an imaginary experiment, in this experiment, I need to use a specific enzyme. However, I do not have this and I cannot buy this enzyme when I am doing this experiment. How can I go about doing this experiment?
Depends on the experiment. If you just want to see interaction of the enz with another molecule, you could get some insight using molecular modeling. However, this technique will not provide catalytic reaction outcomes, but may provide insight if similar reactions have been detailed in this model.
You could potentially prepare the enzyme, or pay a company to do it for you, or find a collaborator to prepare it.
You could ask your laboratory manager or purchasing officer to see if a company that your university buys from regularly sells this enzyme. Sometimes company representatives can ask for testing quantities of material to be supplied on a goodwill basis in the hope of future sales. At worst the company can only say no.
You could extract the gene from the original organism or tissue where it comes from. And using directed mutagenesis you can insert this gene of interest in a vector (like a plasmid) and surexpress in Bacteria (ex : E. coli) then finally purify your enzyme.
In this way you could run all analysis by yourself :)
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