A neurite is an extension from a neuron's soma, used especially when the process has not yet been identified as an axon or a dendrite. This neutral term is useful in developmental biology: an early process need not already have the mature molecular composition or signaling role of either compartment.
Repeated imaging of individual cultured hippocampus neurons showed several initially similar neurites, followed by rapid elongation of one future axon and later differentiation of the other processes into dendrites. Shape at a single early time point therefore need not settle eventual identity.[ref]

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