Xin Liu, and Zhiyong Zhang,2

1School of Data Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, China;

2Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China

Graphical abstract

As the ribosomal proteins are assembled sequentially at each stage, the 16S rRNA changes from an unfolded to a well-folded structure.

Public summary

■ Our simulations provide some dynamic details during the assembly process of the 30S small subunit.

■ S9 and S3 may have more important contributions to the assembly of the 30S subunit than other ribosomal proteins.

■ Our strategy can be applied for studying the assembly dynamics of any large biomolecular complex as long as the assembly map is known.