Oncology & Cancer

Treating tumors with engineered dendritic cells

Cancer biologists at EPFL, UNIGE, and the German Cancer Research Center (Heidelberg) have developed a novel immunotherapy that does not require knowledge of a tumor's antigenic makeup. The new results may pave the way to ...

Oncology & Cancer

Hodgkin's lymphoma: Small changes in cells, big effect

Hodgkin's lymphoma is one of the most common types of lymphoma in young adults. It is characterized by the presence of enlarged B lymphocytes, which are unusual in that they bear on their surface the identifying markers of ...

Immunology

Unveiling a novel immune response in the intestinal epithelium

Researchers from the Jan Dobeš laboratory at Charles University in Prague have made a significant discovery uncovering a novel immune response in the intestinal epithelium. Furthermore, their study delineates a mechanism ...

Immunology

Can science take the STING out of runaway inflammation?

Until the COVID-19 pandemic exploded, few people outside of research labs and intensive care units had heard of a cytokine storm. But once this dangerous form of infection-triggered runaway inflammation started claiming lives ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

A human protein found in non-immune cells defends against COVID-19

Earlier this month, health authorities confirmed that BA.2.86, a highly mutated variant of the virus that causes COVID-19, is at risk of spreading rapidly in countries around the world. With updated shots rolling out this ...

page 1 from 40

Dendrite

Dendrites (from Greek δένδρον déndron, “tree”) are the branched projections of a neuron that act to conduct the electrochemical stimulation received from other neural cells to the cell body, or soma, of the neuron from which the dendrites project. Electrical stimulation is transmitted onto dendrites by upstream neurons via synapses which are located at various points throughout the dendritic arbor. Dendrites play a critical role in integrating these synaptic inputs and in determining the extent to which action potentials are produced by the neuron. Recent research has also found that dendrites can support action potentials and release neurotransmitters, a property that was originally believed to be specific to axons.

The long outgrowths on immune system dendritic cells are also called dendrites. These dendrites do not process electrical signals.

Certain classes of dendrites (i.e. Purkinje cells of cerebellum, cerebral cortex) contain small projections referred to as "appendages" or "spines". Appendages increase receptive properties of dendrites to isolate signal specificity. Increased neural activity at spines increases their size and conduction which is thought to play a role in learning and memory formation. There are approximately 200,000 spines per cell, each of which serve as a postsynaptic process for individual presynaptic axons.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA