During animal development, a fertilized egg duplicates and differentiates to create a complex organism containing billions of cells and dozens of distinct cell types. As different cell lineages adopt distinct fates, self-organizing groups of cells interact using chemical and mechanical means to construct functional tissues and organs. Studies in diverse animal taxa have revealed conserved mechanisms for modulating cellular tension and adhesion in precise spatiotemporal patterns to alter tissue structure. Furthermore, it appears that many of these developmental pathways are redeployed during regeneration to heal injured tissues. Much of our understanding about how these processes work is the result of elegant experiments combining cutting-edge approaches in genetic engineering, microscopy, and biomechanics. This collection presents several techniques that can be used to investigate how biochemical and biomechanical signals are used to remodel tissues, and how such signals can be manipulated in vitro and in vivo via genetic and biophysical means.