The protein expression profile of ACE2 in human tissues

Feria Hikmet; Loren Méar; Mathias Uhlén; Cecilia Lindskog

. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.31.016048 doi: bioRxiv preprint Figure 2 . Cell type-specific localization of ACE2 in human tissues based on immunohistochemistry. Representative images of 18 tissue types and histological structures stained with immunohistochemistry using the polyclonal rabbit antibody HPA000288 (Atlas Antibodies AB), targeting human ACE2 protein (brown), and counterstained with hematoxylin (blue). Highest ACE2 expression was observed in microvilli of the intestinal tract and renal proximal tubules, in membranes of gallbladder epithelium, testicular Sertoli cells and Leydig cells, a subset of glandular cells in seminal vesicle (arrowheads), and in cytoplasm cardiomyocytes. Note that ACE2 protein expression was not detected in the lower parts of the mucosal intestinal layer. No protein expression was observed in lung, bronchus, nasopharynx, esophagus, stomach, endometrium, smooth muscle tissue (visualized in muscle layer of small intestine), spleen, cerebral cortex, adipose tissue or different structures of the skin. Protein expression was neither detected in endothelial cells, here shown in cerebral cortex (arrow), nor in fibroblasts, here sown in dermis layer of skin (arrows). For details, see https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000130234-ACE2/tissue. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.31.016048 doi: bioRxiv preprint Figure 3 . Single cell RNA-seq analysis of human adult lung. Uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) analysis of lung cells based on three publicly available datasets. Each dot represents a single cell colored according to its cluster identity. No high cluster-specific expression of ACE2 could be identified in any of the datasets. The expression pattern of the AT2 cell marker SFTPA1 is shown as a reference.