Challenges in describing ribosome dynamics

For decades, protein folding and functional dynamics have been described in terms of diffusive motion across an underlying energy landscape. With continued advances in structural biology and high-performance computing, the field is positioned to extend these approaches to large biomolecular assemblies. Through the application of energy landscape techniques to the ribosome, one may work towards establishing a comprehensive description of the dynamics, which will bridge theoretical concepts and experimental observations. In this perspective, we discuss a few of the challenges that will need to be addressed as we extend the application of landscape principles to the ribosome.