Once the X-ray structure was known, most of the previous work on prediction of the RNA fold from the sequence was superseded.
You are striking me as dimwitted and without curiousity
Take your ad hominem and stick it somewhere warm.
Exactly what point are you trying to make here? If there are major conclusions about ribosome function that can be made from sequence comparison, state them.
Of course.
As per perceived ad hominum, You are quite defensive.
Sequence analysis, of ribosome RNA or protein sequence or DNA indicate the important regions for structure and function. Structure is function. Conserved residues and motifs tell a lot and provide information to begin deducing structure and designing experiments to infer structure.
In ribosomal structure for example, certain people are subject to being rendered deaf by certain antibiotics. The differences in rRNA sequences between various bacteria that are differentially affected by given antibiotics and the further analysis with human rRNA sequences can indicate why this happens to some people.
I assume you can see why and follow.
All this can be done without a defintive structure derived from X-ray crystallography and are independent of any evolutionary concerns.