A team of scientists has recorded in real time a key step in the assembly of ribosomes — the complex and evolutionarily ancient ‘molecular machines’ that make proteins in cells and are essential for all life forms. They reveal in unprecedented detail how strands of RNA are ‘chaperoned’ by ribosomal proteins into folding properly; the findings overturn the longstanding belief that ribosomes are assembled in a tightly controlled, step-wise process.
