dendritic

adjective den·drit·ic \ (ˌ)den-ˈdri-tik \

Updated on: 9 May 2018

Definition of dendritic

: resembling or having dendrites : branching like a tree

a dendritic drainage system

dendritic cells

Recent Examples of dendritic from the Web

Its lone axon, pointing straight down, and whiskery dendritic spines, which receive signals from neighboring neurons, alone in an empty landscape: the canonical depiction of Cajal’s discovery that neurons are distinct entities.

— sharon begley, STAT, "In ‘Beautiful Brain,’ the secrets of neurons emerge in Nobel-winning scientist’s ink and pencil drawings," 3 May 2018
Apparently, the protein acts sluggishly in some bipolar patients, hampering neurons’ ability to form dendritic spines—little bumps that occur on the edges of nerve cells that are necessary for neural communication.

— dina fine maron, Scientific American, "Getting to the Root of the Problem: Stem Cells Are Revealing New Secrets about Mental Illness," 27 Feb. 2018
The questions covered a wide swath of material, from the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution (physics), supercritical water (chemistry), dendritic drainage patterns (geomorphology) to prime factors (mathematics).

— silvia foster-frau, San Antonio Express-News, "BASIS middle school and Reagan High teams to compete in National Science Bowl," 10 Feb. 2018
The researchers also found that different genes were switched on in fetal dendritic cells than in adult dendritic cells.

— gretchen vogel, Science | AAAS, "A fetus needs to defend itself against foreign bodies—so how does it avoid attacking its mother?," 14 June 2017
Dendritic cells usually send out signals that ramp up proliferation of another type of immune cell, T cells, which then attack invaders.

— gretchen vogel, Science | AAAS, "A fetus needs to defend itself against foreign bodies—so how does it avoid attacking its mother?," 14 June 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'dendritic.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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1816

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