Inefficient splicing of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) RNA is necessary to preserve unspliced and singly spliced viral RNAs for transport to the cytoplasm by the Rev-dependent pathway. Signals within the HIV-1 genome that control the rate of splicing include weak 3 splice sites, exon splicing enhancers (ESE), and exon splicing silencers (ESS). We have previously shown that an ESS present within tat exon 2 (ESS2) and a suboptimal 3 splice site together act to inhibit splicing at the 3 splice site flanking tat exon 2. This occurs at an early step in spliceosome assembly. Splicing at the 3 splice site flanking tat exon 3 is regulated by a bipartite element composed of an ESE and an ESS (ESS3). Here we show that ESS3 is composed of two smaller elements (AGAUCC and UUAG) that can inhibit splicing independently. We also show that ESS3 is more active in the context of a heterologous suboptimal splice site than of an optimal 3 splice site. ESS3 inhibits splicing by blocking the formation of a functional spliceosome at an early step, since A complexes are not detected in the presence of ESS3. Competitor RNAs containing either ESS2 or ESS3 relieve inhibition of splicing of substrates containing ESS3 or ESS2. This suggests that a common cellular factor(s) may be required for the inhibition of tat mRNA splicing mediated by ESS2 and ESS3.Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is a complex retrovirus whose RNA splicing is dependent on the host cell splicing machinery (12, 50). HIV-1 pre-mRNA contains five 5Ј splice sites and nine 3Ј splice sites which are used to generate more than 30 different mRNA species by alternative splicing. In addition, a pool of unspliced RNA must be maintained to serve as genomic RNA and as mRNA for the gag and pol gene products (18,21,32,34,35,38). To achieve the balance between spliced and unspliced RNAs, splicing of HIV-1 RNA is inefficient, a feature which is shared with all other retroviruses (4,7,11,20,22,(45)(46)(47)52). In contrast to the major HIV-1 5Ј splice sites, which are strong, the 3Ј splice sites are weak (33). These are characterized by the presence of nonconsensus polypyrimidine tracts and branch point sites other than the eukaryotic consensus adenosine residue (2,13,17,33,43). In addition, exon sequences downstream of the 3Ј splice sites enhance or inhibit splicing at the 3Ј splice sites (2,3,39,42,51). Furthermore, the virus-encoded protein Rev plays an essential role in facilitating the transport of unspliced and singly spliced mRNAs, thus preventing the viral RNA from splicing to completion (19, 37; for a review, see reference 12).HIV-1 tat mRNA is formed by the splicing of two coding exons (exon 2 and exon 3) and one or more upstream noncoding exons. Exon 3 is also joined to rev exon 2 and is therefore referred to as tat/rev exon 3 (34). The 3Ј splice sites flanking exon 2 and exon 3 (3Ј splice sites 3 and 7, respectively [ Fig. 1]) contain suboptimal polypyrimidine tracts, and the 3Ј splice site flanking exon 3 has been reported to contain a nonconsensus bra...