Lipid analogs with dialkylindocarbocyanine (DiI) head groups and short or unsaturated hydrocarbon chains (e.g. DiIC 12 and FAST DiI) enter the endocytic recycling compartment efficiently, whereas lipid analogs with long, saturated tails (e.g. DiIC 16 and DiIC 18 ) are sorted out of this pathway and targeted to the late endosomes/lysosomes (Mukherjee, S., Soe, T. T., and Maxfield, F. R. (1999) J. Cell Biol. 144, 1271-1284). This differential trafficking of lipid analogs with the same polar head group was interpreted to result from differential partitioning to different types of domains with varying membrane order and/or curvature. Here we investigate the system further by monitoring the trafficking behavior of these lipid analogs under conditions that alter domain properties. There was a marked effect of cholesterol depletion on the cell-surface distribution and degree of internalization of the lipid probes. Furthermore, instead of going to the late endosomes/lysosomes as in control cells, long chain DiI analogs, such as DiIC 16 , were sorted to the recycling pathway in cholesterol-depleted cells. We confirmed that this difference was due to a change in overall membrane properties, and not cholesterol levels per se, by utilizing a Chinese hamster ovary cell line that overexpressed transfected stearoyl-CoA desaturase 1, a rate-limiting enzyme in the production of monounsaturated fatty acids. These cells have a decrease in membrane order because they contain a much larger fraction of unsaturated fatty acids. These cells showed alteration of DiI trafficking very similar to cholesterol-depleted cells. By using cold Triton X-100 extractability of different lipids as a criterion to determine the membrane properties of intracellular organelles, we found that the endocytic recycling compartment has abundant detergent-resistant membranes, in contrast to the late endosomes and lysosomes.Lipids and proteins associated with the cell surface vary in their lateral and transbilayer distribution, as well as the rate at which they are internalized from the plasma membrane. Once inside the cell, they can potentially be delivered to a large variety of organelles by selective partitioning in a series of sorting steps associated with vesicle or tubule formation (1). Although many specific peptide motifs and protein-protein interactions that determine the distribution and trafficking of transmembrane proteins have been characterized (1, 2), the principles underlying lipid sorting and trafficking remain relatively unclear. Although the intracellular destinations and sorting decisions for a variety of lipids and lipid analogs have been investigated in recent years (1, 3), a coherent general set of sorting rules for lipids has yet to emerge.Part of the difficulty in understanding lipid sorting and distribution in the cell arises from the fact that this is the result of a complex interplay between the specific chemistries of individual lipid molecules (e.g. their size, hydrophobicity, head group to acyl chain cross-sectional ratio, charge...