The Ribosome Comes Alive

This essay is a reflection on the ways the X-ray structures of the ribosome are helping in the interpretation of cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) density maps showing the translating ribosome in motion. Through advances in classification methods, cryo-EM and single-particle reconstruction methods have recently evolved to the point where they can yield an array of structures from a single sample (story in a sample), providing snapshots of an entire subprocess of translation, such as translocation or decoding.