Conditions for the isolation and quantitation of dolichyl phosphate, dolichol, cholesterol, and ubiquinone by reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography were investigated. A simple and fast sample preparation procedure using prepacked mini columns was employed. The UV spectra of the fractions obtained were examined and, in the case of dolichol compounds, the maximum absorbance around 205 nm was shown to be linearly dependent on the number of double bonds present in the isoprenolog. The analytical procedure described shows a very broad range of linearity (five orders of magnitude) and detects single dolichyl phosphate isoprenologs in amounts as small as 0.1 ng. The lowest overall recovery, that for dolichyl phosphate, is 77%. Use of isoprenolog 23 and ergosterol as internal standards reduced the variation in the method to 2.5, 4.0 and 5.5% for cholesterol, dolichyl phosphate and dolichol, respectively. The method described was employed to study the lipid composition of rat organs and biological variations in these compositions.