Tissue morphogenesis: how multiple cells cooperate to generate a tissue

Genetic analysis in model organisms has recently achieved a detailed molecular description of many key cellular processes controlling embryonic morphogenesis. To understand higher order tissue morphogenesis, we now need to define how these processes become integrated across different cell groups and cell layers. Here, we review progress in this fast moving area, which was to a large degree made possible by novel imaging methods and the increasingly frequent use of modeling. Discussing examples from Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila embryos, two powerful and simple models, we highlight novel principles relying in part on mechanical tension, and outline the role of junctions as signal integrators.