Saturated phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylglycerol are important components of pulmonary surface active material, but the relative contributions of different pathways for the synthesis of these two classes of phospholipids by alveolar type II cells are not established. We purified freshly isolated rat type II cells by centrifugal elutriation and incubated them with [1-14C]palmitate as the sole exogenous fatty acid in one series of experiments or with [9,10-3H]palmitate, mixed fatty acids (16:0, 18:1 and 18:2), and [U-14C]glucose in another series of experiments. Type II cells readily incorporated [1-14C]palmitate into saturated phosphatidic acid (55-59% of total phosphatidic acid), saturated diacylglycerol (82-87% of total diacylglycerol), saturated phosphatidylcholine (69-76% of total phosphatidylcholine), and saturated phosphatidylglycerol (55-59% of total phosphatidylglycerol). Saturated phosphatidic acid, diacylglycerol and phosphatidylglycerol were nearly equally labeled in the sn-1 and sn-2 positions, whereas saturated phosphatidylcholine was preferentially labeled in the sn-2 position. With [9,10-3H]palmitate and [U-14C]glucose, the labeling patterns of phosphatidic acid, diacylglycerol and phosphatidylglycerol were similar to each other but different from that of phosphatidylcholine. The glucose label was found predominantly in the unsaturated phosphatidylcholines at early times (3-10 min) and in the saturated phosphatidylcholines at later times (30-90 min). Similarly, the 3H/14C ratio was very high in saturated phosphatidylcholine and always above that in saturated diacylglycerol. We conclude that freshly isolated type II cells synthesize saturated phosphatidic acid, diacylglycerol, phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylglycerol and that under our in vitro conditions the deacylation-reacylation pathway is important for the synthesis of saturated phosphatidylcholine but is less important for the synthesis of saturated phosphatidylglycerol. By the assumptions stated in the text during the pulse chase experiment de novo synthesis of saturated phosphatidylcholine from saturated diacylglycerol accounted for 25% of the total synthesis of saturated phosphatidylcholine.