Summary
In thin sections of the lung of the fresh-water turtle Pseudemys (Chrysemys) scripta some pneumocytes can be distinguished from the remaining pulmonary epithelial cells by a larger amount of mitochondria. In these cells the typical features of type-I and type-II cells are absent. Freeze-fracture replicas reveal rod-shaped particles in the apical plasma membrane of a small population of pneumocytes, which by cytological criteria seem to be identical with the mitochondria-rich cells observed in thin sections. It is assumed that these cells represent a distinct type of pneumocytes in the turtle lung and that they are a member of the group of mitochondria-rich cells present in some ion-transporting epithelia. The function of these cells in this location remains to be determined.
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Bartels, H., Welsch, U. Freeze-fracture study of the turtle lung. Cell Tissue Res. 236, 453–457 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00214249
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00214249