Optimality as a framework for understanding developmental robustness

Embryo growth, morphogenesis, and patterning are complex processes that coordinate between cellular dynamics, fate specification, and multiscale physical forces. Understanding how robustness in embryo development is achieved despite inherent heterogeneities in gene expression, cell properties, and tissue growth is a fundamental question. Although various feedback between gene expression, signaling, and cell and tissue mechanics have been uncovered to confer robustness on developmental systems, measuring variability and robustness from a quantitative perspective often remains challenging. Furthermore, cell fate plasticity, a key mechanism that can confer robustness, is lacking in many developing tissues. This review highlights how recent technological and conceptual advances in quantitative approaches to biology help to overcome these bottlenecks, with a particular focus on how mechanochemical feedback, or alternatively, selectively tuned control parameters, ensure developmental robustness.