Our findings also suggest that vaccines designed to elicit protective anti-HIV CD4+ T cell responses in the genital mucosa, for example via the ‘prime and pull’ strategy (Bernstein et al., 2019; Shin and Iwasaki, 2012), need to consider the high diversity of HIV-susceptible genital T cells present and the high levels of HIV infection supported by these cells. The gene discussed is CD4; the disease is HIV infectious disease.