The lymphocyte-specific proto-oncogene lck is transcribed from two developmentally regulated, independently functioning promoters. The proximal promoter is used in thymocytes, but not in peripheral T lymphocytes. The distal promoter operates in all stages of T cell development, but predominates in more mature cells. Both promoters lack a TATAA element and they share little sequence similarity with each other. Using transgenic mice to locate in vivo functional cis-acting regions of the murine distal promoter, we defined a region from -1786 to -2913 that is essential for consistent insertion site-independent expression of a heterologous cDNA reporter. The transgene is lymphoid specific and expressed predominantly in T cells. One of four transgenic mice bearing a shortened distal promoter (-886 to +41) expressed the reporter in the expected developmental pattern, suggesting that important regulatory elements that require favorable flanking sequences for expression are present nearer the transcription start site. The DNA sequence from -4032 to +623 contains few consensus binding sites for previously described T lymphocyte-specific trans-acting factors, and their locations do not correlate well with the functional data. However, the locations of tissue-specific modifications of chromatin structure in the promoter region, manifest as sites of DNase hypersensitivity, correlated with these two functional regions in normal mice. The identification of lck distal promoter regulatory regions provides a useful control element for deliberate expression of transgenes in mature T lymphocytes. In addition, these regulatory regions should assist in defining T cell-specific trans-acting factors.