ACE2 is the entry gate for the coronavirus - but its day job involves blood pressure......There's a system of hormones in our bodies that controls blood pressure called the renin-angiotensin system. The crucial parts, for this story, are: a hormone called angiotensin; and some enzymes that convert it, aka angiotensin converting enzymes - A C E. This is what ACE2 stands for......
It's one of the most fundamental systems for our basic physiology and there are two enzymes which regulate this: ACE and ACE2. ACE constricting blood vessels, and ACE2 the opposite - it opens the blood vessels and keeps us healthy, keeps multiple of our organs healthy............
ACE2 is the door into our body for the viruses. The virus can only live if it enters our cells in our body, and to enter the cells in our body it needs a gate. ACE2 is the central entry gate for the first and now the second SARS coronavirus.....
There’s a crucial distinction between ACE2, the star of our show; and ACE, as in ACE inhibitors. They’re both in the same system, and both first and foremost seem to affect blood pressure, but in opposite ways. Let's look now at ACE......
We all have two ACE genes and we can have one of two flavours. One's known as the I or insertion variant, which has got a tiny little extra chunk of DNA in it. And one's called the deletion or D variant, which has that little bit missing....
The I version of the gene is much more common in long distance runners. Now the D version is much more common in power lifters and rowers for instance......We were doing some work with mountaineers. These people climb of course very high and there the higher you go, the less oxygen there is. And we found that the I version of the gene was very, very much more common, much, much more common even than in marathon runners. Having those same genes massively influenced your chance of surviving from severe lung injury........ If we look at the distribution of the I and D versions of the ACE gene around the world, the places that have much more I versions of the gene do seem to have less severe disease with coronavirus.