outer segment of the cell is comprised of a stack of many hundreds of densely packed discs, each of which represents a double layer of infolded plasma membrane. It has been suggested that phospholipid moieties in these membranes are metabolically active and are closely involved in the generation of physiological mediators. Modifi cations in the metabolism of photoreceptor membrane glycerolipids have been linked to the transduction of visual stimuli ( 3 ). Rod outer segment (ROS) membranes are composed of 50% protein and 50% lipid, by weight ( 2 ). Phospholipids and cholesterol represent nearly 90-95% and 4-6% (w/w) of total lipids, respectively. Rhodopsin accounts for at least 80-85% (w/w) of the total proteins ( 4-6 ) in disc ROS membranes. The rest are mainly proteins involved in phototransduction. The composition of mammalian ROS membrane phospholipids indicates that the major phospholipids are phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) and phosphatidylcholine (PC), along with relatively large amounts of phosphatidylserine (PS) (15%). Small amounts (less than 1% each) of sphingomyelin, phosphatidylinositol (PI) and phosphatidic acid (PA) are found in these membranes ( 7-13 ). In vertebrates, cholesterol (exclusively as the free sterol) is the principal neutral lipid, comprising The vertebrate photoreceptor cell is composed of different cellular compartments [outer segment (OS), inner segment (IS), and synaptic terminal (ST)], all of which differ in their lipid and protein content ( 1, 2 ). The photoreceptor is a highly specialized cell that responds to light stimulus and transmits this response to adjoining neurons for ultimate relay to the visual centers of the brain. TheThis work was supported