Moloney leukemia virus (MoLV) induces lymphomas in BALB/c mice which either involve an immature thymic T-cell subpopulation or a splenic mature T-cell subpopulation. To investigate further the possible virological and immunological differences in these lymphomas, several lymphoma cell lines were derived. Although the majority of these cell lines expressed only the parental MoLV, one lymphoma cell line (5F4) was found which expressed only a defective virus. 5F4 virions lacked detectable reverse transcriptase activity and by immunoprecipitation lacked a serologically detectable reverse transcriptase. The lack of reverse transcriptase did not appear to be due to a deletion in the viral genome. Intracellularly 5F4 cells synthesized normal gag gene precursors but had little, if any, detectable Pr180gag-pol or an altered precursor. These results suggest that the defect of the 5F4 virus is associated with the inability to translate the appropriate precursor for reverse transcriptase. The possible origin of the detective 5F4 virus was also examined by competition radioimmunoassays. These results demonstrate that the type-specific proteins, gp71 and p12, are serologically identical to those of the endogenous ecotropic virus and distinct from the MoLV proteins. Competition assays of 5F4 cell extracts further demonstrated the lack of any detectable MoLV type-specific proteins, although the tumor was presumably induced by MoLV. The significance of these observations to leukemogenesis is discussed.