In DAH tissues are treated as liquids consisting of mobile cells whose varying degrees of surface adhesion cause them to reorganize spontaneously to minimize their interfacial free energy.
[3] Although originally motivated by the problem of understanding cell sorting behavior in vertebrate embryos, DAH has subsequently been applied to explain several other morphogenic phenomena.
This experiment demonstrated that tissue organization can occur independent of the path taken, implying that it is mediated by forces that are persistently present and doesn't arise solely from the chronological sequence of developmental events preceding it.
[3] In 1964 Malcolm Steinberg introduced the "differential adhesion hypothesis" which uses thermodynamic principles to describe and explain patterns of cell sorting and arrangement observed.
[4] Since its original formulation in the context of vertebrate embryogenesis, DAH has been utilized to offer an explanation for several other morphogenic phenomena including wound healing, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition in cancer progression and metastasis.