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.