The effect of deletions within the enhancer region in the U3 part of the LTR derived from the murine retrovirus Akv was studied. The deletions were stably transmitted through normal virus replication as shown by sequence analysis of cloned polymerase chain reaction product of the cDNA copy of the viral RNA. Genetic tagging of the retrovirus with lacO facilitated the analysis. Among the individual mutated LTRs an over 100-fold difference in a transient expression assay was previously detected. This difference was not revealed in studies of viral replication in cell culture, where the expression level of virus with the deleted LTRs all reached the level of virus with the intact LTR. We propose that stimulatory cis-acting sequences either adjacent to the site of proviral integration or in the coding regions of the provirus may compensate for deletions in the LTR.