The emerging view of early dorso‐ventral patterning of amphibian embryos is that two opposing gradients of dorsalising and ventralising secreted factors are necessary. while several transcription factors acting upstream or downstream of the dorsalising molecules have been identified, until recently little was known about the transcriptional response to ventralising signals. Now two groups describe the identification of related homeodomain proteins, Xvent‐1 and Vox, which are able to convert dorsal cells of Xenopus embryos into more ventral ones(1,2).