Could not help but post this cute little lysosomal structure in a macrophage of a mouse that liquid breathed E2 (see previous posts for chemical structure) for 3 hours and was allowed to recover for 48 hours. This lysosome is a tiny portion of an electron micrograph of a macrophage in the alveolar space of the lung.

The scope of lysosomal variation in these macrophages is really quite astounding.  I see lysosomes with a tiny bit of enzyme material localized on one side of the membrane bound structure, and others, like this, with maybe 4 or so tiny perfluorocarbon droplets (which looked like two eyes to me), and massive amounts of enzyme (all that medium grey in a round membrane structure). A library of these variable organelles is what I am attempting to do at this point.  E2 is capturing my attention. If you look closely, around the periphery of the lysosome there are small circular areas, which I have no doubt are the tiniest lysosomal droplets down around the size of 20-30nm in diameter.  The “eyes” that are droplets here are much larger than that, closer to 100-200nm). Highlight in the eyes and the dark pupil i did in photoshop just to have fun, but the eyeball itself is E2 and the “nose” is enzyme density.  In the upper left corner of the image there is another lysosome with a round E2 droplet (about 75nm diameter) with some layered darker substructure.

It is possible that part of the lysosomal material here is unique to lung since alveolar macrophages (which this is) tend to uptake surfactant in large quantities, and it seems that some of this lipid material (perfluorocarbons have different lipid solubilities, and this might contribute to the mixture of electron dense (osmiophilic) nature of the lysosomes. I might call these MVE/LE/PFC, but that is too cumbersome, hence forth, just lysosome. Besides the specific proteins and enzymes and pH in these structures has not been measured in this archival material… thus there is no way to accurately classify them so I will call them lysosomes.\