ACE2 Expression is Increased in the Lungs of Patients with Comorbidities Associated with Severe COVID-19

Bruna GG Pinto; Antonio ER Oliveira; Youvika Singh; Leandro Jimenez; Andre NA Goncalves; Rodrigo LT Ogava; Rachel Creighton; Jean PS Peron; Helder I Nakaya

and their regulatory mechanisms [29] . We performed Pearson correlation between the expression of ACE2 and all other genes in each of the seven lung transcriptome studies (Table S1 ), combined the p-values using Fisher's method, and applied an FDR correction ( Figure 4a ). This approach identified 544 and 173 genes with positive and negative correlation with ACE2, respectively (Figure 4a) . Several of these genes were related to histone modifications, such as HAT1, HDAC2, KDM5B, among others (Figure 4a ). Among the positively correlated genes, we found ADAM10 that regulates ACE2 cleavage in human airway epithelia [30] and TLR3 that plays a key role in the innate response to SARS-CoV or MERS-CoV infection [31] .