RER protein in a type II cell of a guinea pig

The stacks of RER cisternae in this particular type II cell don’t show the layering and patterning that other cisternae from these animals do, that is, they look more like ordinary RER cisternae (though clearly a little dilated, and clearly more stacked).  Still I think this is an overproduction of SP-A or some SP as other images from the same animal show the periodicity seen in intracisternal bodies.

The stacks of RER are reminiscent of the stacks of birbeck granules in the Langerhans cells where langrin is overproduced.  This is a paper by  J. Valladeau et al, Immunity 12: 77-81 (2000) where they transfected langerin cDNA into fibroblasts and got stacks of birbeck granules (which they show in an electron micrograph). While the image below is certainly NOT langerin, and NOT a transfection of any SP-A cDNA into alveolar cells, it is probably the ONLY image that i have found where the profiles or RER might mimic granules (RER) of other c-type lectins (like the birbeck granule) in terms of being segmented and stacked.

type_II_cell_RER_and_LBs_gp