Daily Archives: March 29, 2016

Guinea pig type II alveolar cell: pseudocolor transmission electron micrograph

Type II alveolar pneumocyte here pseudocolored as follows: nucleus, purple; nuclear pores light green; perichromatin granules, violet-red; intracisternal bodies, even in the perinuclear space, light blue (these are looking more and more like they might be over production of Surfactant protein A – a collectin which has modest surfactant properties in the alveolar space but probably greater impact on pulmonary immune function. Interestingly it lines up pretty much on the button with two mirror sets of the actual surfactant protein A molecule (which is a group of 18 similar single protein units spanning about 50 nm, so two top to bottom would be about 100 nm the width of one set of bands in an intracisternal body — at least I hope it works out that way); lamellar bodies, of which there are four, gold; and a single mitochondrion, green.icb_M-8041_gp_colored_flat