FASN and blindness (disorder): In a mouse model experiment, Rajagopal et al., showed that deletion of the de novo lipogenic enzyme fatty acid synthase from neural retina resulted in progressive neurodegeneration and blindness, a phenomenon that was associated with decreased membrane cholesterol content, as well as loss of discrete n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid– and saturated fatty acid–containing phospholipid species within specialized membrane microdomains (22).