[RoboTeddy]

The experiment in blood sounds interesting, I hope it works!

It looks like there might be differences between controller immune systems and regular ones that don't have to do with choice of epitope:

http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/19/infdi...

Does this make it less likely that targeting specific epitopes is all there is to the picture? (I'm happy to assume that we'll get an immune response with memory in humans -- the question is, how confident should we be that that response will control HIV?)

[naveenspark]

The article is describing one of the many explanations that has been brought forward to explain why controllers do what they do. If you are looking for a common denominator across controllers broadly, the selective epitope targeting explanation seems to make the most sense to us and does not appear to be constrained by anything but the individual's HLA type which essentially determines what epitopes a particular individual's immune system can "see."