Expression of the SARS-CoV-2 cell receptor gene ACE2 in a wide variety of human tissues

Since its discovery in December 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected more than 2 180 000 people worldwide and has caused more than 150 000 deaths as of April 16, 2020. SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), uses the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) as a cell receptor to invade human cells. Thus, ACE2 is the key to understanding the mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This study is to investigate the ACE2 expression in various human tissues in order to provide insights into the mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

We compared ACE2 expression levels across 31 normal human tissues between males and females and between younger (ages ≤ 49 years) and older (ages > 49 years) persons using two-sided Student's t test. We also investigated the correlations between ACE2 expression and immune signatures in various tissues using Pearson's correlation test.