Mechanical Control of Morphogenesis by Fat/Dachsous/Four-Jointed Planar Cell Polarity Pathway

Abstract
The Right Move: During development, epithelial tissues deform to give rise to functional tissues and organs. How gene expression controls local cell mechanical properties to drive tissue deformation remains poorly understood. Bosveld et al. (p. 724 , published online 12 April) have uncovered how the conserved Fat/Dachsous/Four-jointed signaling pathway controls local mechanical cell properties to generate global tissue contraction in Drosophila epithelial tissue.