The four adducts that arise by cis ring opening of the four optically active benzo[a]pyrene diol epoxides by the exocyclic N6-amino group of deoxyadenosine were incorporated synthetically into each of two different oligonucleotide 16-mers, 5'-TTTXGAGTCTGCTCCC-3' [context I(A)] and 5'-CAGXTTTAGAGTCTGC-3' [context II(A)], at the X position. The eight resultant oligonucleotides were separately ligated into bacteriophage M13mp7L2 and replicated in Escherichia coli that had been SOS-induced, and the progeny were analyzed to evaluate the consequences of replication past these adducts. The presence of these adducts reduced plaque yields substantially. However, the progeny obtained exhibited high frequencies of base substitution mutation ranging from 9 to 68%, depending upon the individual adduct and the sequence context in which it was placed. For most of the adducts, A --> T transversion was the mutation found most frequently in either sequence context, and mutation frequencies in context I(A) were always substantially greater than those in context II(A). In context I(A), adducts with an R configuration at the site of nucleoside attachment were more mutagenic than those with an S configuration. In both sequence contexts that were studied, the cis adduct arising from the (7S,8R)-diol (9S,10R)-epoxide was the most mutagenic adduct. These findings clearly show that individual mutation frequencies are determined by the combined effects of both adduct structure and sequence context.