Starting when we are embryos:
Yet the manner in which bodies and tissues take form remains “one of the most important, and still poorly understood, questions of our time”, says developmental biologist Amy Shyer, who studies morphogenesis at the Rockefeller University in New York City. For decades, biologists have focused on the ways in which genes and other biomolecules shape bodies, mainly because the tools to analyse these signals are readily available and always improving. Mechanical forces have received much less attention.
But considering only genes and biomolecules is “like you’re trying to write a book with only half the letters of the alphabet”, says Xavier Trepat, a mechanobiologist at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain.
Amber Dance, “The secret forces that squeeze and pull life into shape” at Nature
And just think! It all happens by accident! Wait…