(1) The removal of the nuclear envelope from isolated rat-liver nuclei by washing with Triton X-100 (TX-100) was assessed by electron microscopy. All the envelope was removed by 0.04 % (w\v) TX-100. (2) After this removal, phosphorylation of inositol lipids and diacylglycerol (DAG) from [γ-$#P]ATP still occurs, despite the near complete absence of detectable (by mass assay) DAG and PtdIns. This suggests that the majority of these two lipids in nuclei are present in the nuclear membrane, but the small amounts remaining after extraction, defined as intranuclear, are available for phosphorylation by lipid kinases (36 % for DAG and 24 % for PtdIns respectively, when expressed as a percentage of incorporation of intact nuclei). (3) PtdIns(4,5)P # did not follow the same pattern as PtdIns and DAG ; after removal of the nuclear membrane, 40 % of the mass of this lipid was left in the nucleus. Moreover, a similar amount of PtdIns(4,5)P # was also resistant to extraction with even higher concentrations of detergent, suggesting that PtdIns(4,5)P # has a discrete intranuclear location, probably bound to nuclear proteins. (4) Addition of exogenous substrates, PtdIns, PtdIns(4)P and DAG, to membrane-depleted nuclei resulted in reconstitution of the majority of lipid phosphorylations from [γ-$#P]ATP (70 %, 90% and 94 % of intact nuclei respectively),