 The forces
that direct this search are likely to be a combination of local and global influences whose effects are felt at various stages of the reaction.Advances in experimental and theoretical studies have shown that folding can be viewed in terms of energy landscapes, where folding kinetics is considered as a progressive organisation of an ensemble of partially folded structures through which a protein passes on its way to the folded structure.This has been described in terms of a folding funnel, in which an unfolded protein has a large number of conformational states available and there are fewer states available to the folded protein.