Phosphodiesterase 6 (PDE6) is the effector enzyme in the phototransduction cascade and is critical for the health of both rod and cone photoreceptors. Its dysfunction, caused by mutations in either the enzyme itself or AIPL1 (aryl hydrocarbon receptor-interacting protein-like 1), leads to retinal diseases culminating in blindness. Progress in research on PDE6 and AIPL1 has been severely hampered by failure to express functional PDE6 in a heterologous expression system. Here, we demonstrated that AIPL1 is an obligate chaperone of PDE6 and that it enables low yield functional folding of cone PDE6C in cultured cells. We further show that the AIPL1-mediated production of folded PDE6C is markedly elevated in the presence of the inhibitory P␥-subunit of PDE6. As illustrated in this study, a simple and sensitive system in which AIPL1 and P␥ are co-expressed with PDE6 represents an effective tool for probing structure-function relationships of AIPL1 and reliably establishing the pathogenicity of its variants.Cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases of the sixth family (PDE6) 2 are the key effectors in the visual transduction cascade in rod and cone photoreceptors. In the dark, activity of the PDE6 catalytic dimers is restrained by two tightly bound inhibitory ␥-subunits (P␥). This allows cGMP to maintain depolarizing "dark" current through a cGMP-gated channel in the photoreceptor plasma membrane. Photoexcitation leads to G-protein-mediated activation of PDE6 followed by a drop in cytoplasmic cGMP, channel closure, and propagation of an electrical signal to downstream retinal neurons (1, 2). In addition to being essential to photoreceptor physiology, PDE6 is critical to the health and survival of rods and cones. Malfunctions caused by mutations in genes that encode either PDE6 or its putative chaperone, aryl hydrocarbon receptor-interacting protein-like 1 (AIPL1), lead to severe blinding retinal diseases.Mutations in the PDE6A, PDE6B, and PDE6G genes, which encode the catalytic PDE6AB subunits and P␥ of rod PDE6, respectively, are responsible for a significant proportion of cases of recessive retinitis pigmentosa (3-5) and can also lead to autosomal dominant congenital stationary night blindness (6). Mutations in their cone counterparts, PDE6C and PDE6H, cause autosomal recessive achromatopsia (7-10).PDE6 deficiency also appears to underlie one of the most severe forms of Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA type 4), a condition caused by mutations in the AIPL1 gene (11,12). LCA is an early onset inherited retinopathy and one of the main causes of blindness in children (13). The link between PDE6 and AIPL1 was discovered in studies of AIPL1 knock-out and knockdown mouse models, which revealed rapid severe retinal degeneration and a marked reduction in PDE6 protein levels and activity prior to the loss of photoreceptor cells (14, 15). Thus, the animal models recapitulated the hallmarks of LCA and suggested that AIPL1 is a potential chaperone of PDE6. This notion is consistent with the fact that AIPL1 contains an FK506-binding pro...