The present invention relates to replication competent variants of
mammalian immunodeficiency virus comprising mutations and/or deletions of
the V3 hypervariable loop and compensatory mutations, as well as methods
for producing such variants. The invention also relates to V3-loop
deletion mammalian immunodeficiency virus mutants that have compensatory
mutations, deletions of the V1/V2 loops, or both. The invention further
relates to isolated Env, gp120 polypeptides, and gp41 polypeptides
comprising novel mutations useful in conjunction with, or separate from,
a virus of the invention, as well as nucleic acids encoding the same.