Population genetics of the angiotensin-converting enzyme in Chinese.

A genetic polymorphism exists for the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) gene which accounts for 44% of the variance of circulating ACE activity in a normal Caucasian population. The presence or absence of a 250 bp fragment in intron 16 of the gene serves as a marker for this polymorphism. One hundred and eighty-nine normal Chinese subjects were genotyped and phenotyped for this ACE polymorphism. The frequencies of the deletion and insertion alleles among Chinese are 0.3 and 0.7 respectively, indicating a much higher prevalence of the insertion allele than had been reported among Caucasians.