Manipulating the patterns of mechanical forces that shape multicellular tissues

Abstract

During embryonic development, spatial and temporal patterns of mechanical forces help to transform unstructured groups of cells into complex, functional tissue architectures. Here, we review emerging approaches to manipulate these patterns of forces to investigate the mechanical mechanisms that shape multicellular tissues, with a focus on recent experimental studies of epithelial tissue sheets in the embryo of the model organism Drosophila melanogaster.