Association of GST M1 null polymorphism with Parkinson's disease in a Chilean population with a strong Amerindian genetic component

We have studied the association of a null mutation of Glutathione Transferase M1 (GST M1*0/0) with Parkinson's disease (MIM 168600) in a Chilean population with a strong Amerindian genetic component. We determined the genotype in 349 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (174 female and 175 male; 66.84 ± 10.7 years of age), and compared that to 611 controls (457 female and 254 male; 62 ± 13.4 years of age). A significant association of the null mutation in GST M1 with Parkinson's disease was found (p = 0.021), and the association was strongest in the earlier age range. An association of GSTM1*0/0 with Parkinson's disease supports the hypothesis that Glutathione Transferase M1 plays a role in protecting astrocytes against toxic dopamine oxidative metabolism, and most likely by preventing toxic one-electron reduction of aminochrome. © 2007 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved

The Hospitality of the Commons: A Collaborative Reflection on a SoTL Conference

This is a large-scale, multi-author collaborative autoethnographic study exploring the concept of building a tangible teaching commons on the example of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Commons Conference. The project organizers sought to provide a big tent and extended an invitation to attendees to respond to a series of writing prompts about their conference experience. Collaborative writing took place asynchronously over an approximately 60-day period following the close of the conference and generated ≈ 20,000 words. This corpus became the basis for a three-stage emergent coding process, conducted by the four-member steering commit-tee, which led to the identification of three primary themes from the collective experiences of the 2023 SoTL Commons Conference attendees: SoTL as pedagogy, SoTL as a community of scholars, and SoTL as scholarship. Despite some limitations to what the sense of commons represents, the project highlighted the respondents’ spirit of appreciative inquiry, a signature mindset of SoTL and engaged participants who were new to the field. We argue that it acted as a form of academic hospitality itself; enabling the sharing of practice, deepening of reflection, strengthening of research skills, fostering of social connections, and, by extension, the advancement of the field as a community of scholars