Daily Archives: August 25, 2016

Rabbit alveolar type II cell: is this surfactant protein A or not?

Layered intracisternal protein granules in mammalian lung, The cell: images

Going through additional species of animals looking for possible corollaries for the intracisternal bodies found in the RER of guinea pig, ferret and dogs, I examined just a few transmission electron micrographs of rabbit. One animal from a study with Leland Clark Jr, very likely involving artificial blood, and four other rabbits in studies with David Warshawsky, with carcinogens (likely dibenzcarbazol, and also iron oxide).  In the former (see the unretouched, but contrast enhanced micrograph below) I did find three stacked RER cisternae which had the look of some of the cisternal bodies found in three species but I was not able to detect any of the layering–aka—periodicity within these cisternae.  Well actually i was tempted to see it, it seemed to me that very faintly there was some tendency to see banding.  You can judge for yourself. Top micrograph.

In the bottom micrograph at the thinnest part of the cisterna (inset marked by a black rectangle and enlarged to upper right corner) at a near perpendicular cut, it seemed to me that the cisterna was more than 100 nm in width.  (A ribosome adjacent to the cisterna was used as a measuring stick, the latter presumed to be 25 – 30 nm in diameter;  red dots). What might be construed as linear patterning, or parallel periodicity, appears as red lines.

11320_37150_rabbit11320_37150_rabbit1

Amazing! and not to bright.

Ultimate order, the cell

I have worked in environmental health for almost 40 years (well maybe a little more if you count postdoctoral training). And most if it has been in the same department. This says much about my resistance to change, but it says nothing about my desire to “care”
and “spare” when very old buildings are thoughtlessly removed, renovated, revived etc.  And I am not against progress, but I am also not for change for the sake of adding new names to new facades that are no better than the ones erased.

I was always amazed and provoked and saddened working in environmental health because it was a “tag” for most workers here, not a passion.  We still had boxed lunches in ugly wasteful plastic containers, recyclable cans thrown into the regular trash, no plan for reminders when staff took their recyclable papers and cardboard out to the regular dumpster. No thought for the escaped coolants, or energy conservation (making some parts of the buildings too cold to work in without a jacket, others so hot and dusty that you suffocated using the stairwells).  Even cleanliness was spotty in the buildings (not good when there is lead paint on every wooden window, literally everywhere, toxic dust, ….  some asbestos, traces of other things left over from experiments…..and where I workeugg_emogid for so many years was often left on the “outside” .  Ha ha… My coworker (unnamed for their protection) and i used sharpie to draw a circle around a large dead insect which sat on the back stairwell for “literally, not figuratively” years.  OK, so i am not being a grump…  but now the Old College of Medicine…. not the one built in 1972, but the one which housed pretty much all the medical departments for basic science for the first two years of medical school in the “before time”… which has been renovated a couple of times. I remember one such 3,000,000 project which raised eyebrows, now obliterated by another iteration…. is being power washed.  This in and of itself is not a bad thing, but two men spraying down windows most certainly covered in chipped old lead paint are doing so with no respirators, and putting all that filth into the neighboring ground… hmm  right next to a hospital… tracked into many other buildings, and even the home of students attending the college of medicine, and the department.  Something doesn’t work here.  I am more than happy to take your comments if you can prove I have spoken out of turn…..  your questions, though, will have to find a way to me besides the “comments” section on this blog, since that is just a place for selfserving spambots.