Development encompasses processes that occur at multiple length scales, including gene-regulatory interactions, cell movements and reorganization, cell signalling and growth. It is essential that the timing of events in all of these different processes is coordinated to generate well-patterned tissues and organs. However, how the timing of intrinsic cell state changes is coordinated with events occurring at the multi-tissue and whole-organism level is unknown. Here, we argue that an important mechanism that accounts for the integration of timing across levels of organization is provided by tissue tectonics, i.e. how morphogenetic events driving tissue shape changes result in the relative displacement of signalling and responding tissues and coordinate developmental timing across scales. In doing so, tissue tectonics provides a mechanism by which the cell specification events intrinsic to cells can be modulated by the temporal exposure to extracellular signals. This exposure is in turn regulated by higher-order properties of the embryo, such as their physical properties, rates of growth and the combination of dynamic cell behaviours, impacting tissue morphogenesis. Tissue tectonics creates a downward flow of information from higher to lower levels of biological organization, providing an instance of downward causation in development.

发育涵盖在多个尺度上发生的过程，包括基因调控相互作用、细胞运动和重组、细胞信号传导和生长。协调所有这些不同过程中的事件发生时间对于生成模式良好的组织和器官至关重要。然而，内在细胞状态变化的时间如何与多组织和整个生物体水平上发生的事件相协调尚不清楚。在这里，我们认为组织构造提供了解释跨组织层次时间整合的重要机制，即驱动组织形状变化的形态发生事件如何导致信号和响应组织的相对位移并协调跨尺度的发育时间。为此，组织构造提供了一种机制，通过该机制可以通过暂时暴露于细胞外信号来调节细胞固有的细胞规范事件。这种暴露反过来又受到胚胎的高阶特性的调节，例如它们的物理特性、生长速率和动态细胞行为的组合，影响组织形态发生。组织构造创造了从较高层次到较低层次的生物组织的信息向下流动，提供了发育过程中向下因果关系的实例。