Lung lesion: guinea pig alveolar type II cell

This electron micrograph (image) is from a guinea pig lung which was part of a study for vinyl chloride exposure and also given doses of vitamin C.  Gathering tissues, I suspect there was something suspicious that caught our eyes, and a tissue block was taken and marked “lung lesion”. No further diagnosis was given, but in searching for what might be the intracisternal granule in type II cells from guinea pig, ferret, and dog, I found it interesting NOT to find the organized protein in the RER cisternae or in the perinuclear space (often the site of the lamellated protein structure) in alveolar type II cells of this particular lung lesion, even though there were small dilated profiles of RER.  Image below is pseudocolored: nucleus, green; lamellar bodies (of which there are quite a few, and even some in an invagination of the nucleus, blue; cell cytoplasm,  pink; background tissues, orange.  I will pseudocolor the RER and mitochondria as well. There are many free ribosomes, maybe a little more than usual.

4506_M8035_lung_lesion_typeII_pneumocyte