In unraveling how a single cell develops into a complex organism, one vexing question has remained for developmental biology: How do robust patterns form in the body? An answer has now been found for the zebrafish neural tube. In this paradigm of patterned tissues, the varying stickiness of cells combined with gradients of signaling molecules is responsible for generating a robust pattern. This is the result of a study published in Science, carried out jointly by the lab of Carl-Philipp Heisenberg at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) and the lab of Sean Megason at Harvard Medical School.