By morphological and histochemical methods, the authors demonstrated the differentiation of J6-2 leukemic cells induced by exogenous ganglioside GM3, and studied the change of glycosphingolipid and phospholipid composition after differentiation. The results showed that the main ganglioside component was GM3, and no significant changes were seen after differentiation. The neutral GSL component CMH and phospholipid component PC were shown to increase after differentiation, and lyso-PC, sphingomyelin, PI+PS were shown to decrease. This study suggests a new function of ganglioside——regulation of phospholipid metabolism, the mechanism of which remains to be elucidated.