From Muscle Regeneration Research to Youth Outreach, PhD Candidate Olga Jaime Advances Science

Olga Jaime, in addition to conducting research that could one day help our bodies regenerate damaged skeletal muscle, is paying it forward as a volunteer for STEM-education outreach programs.

If it weren’t for Mr. Torres, Olga Jaime might have failed fourth grade. As an immigrant from Mexico, Olga had been overwhelmed by her family’s move to California. “Integrating myself into a new environment was very tough, and I struggled to learn English,” recalls Olga, now a PhD candidate in the UC Irvine School of Medicine. Fortunately, her teacher helped her persevere. “Mr. Torres stayed after school with me, and we practiced reading until I caught up so I wouldn’t flunk.”

Today, Olga is conducting promising research into stem cell therapies that could one day help our bodies regenerate damaged skeletal muscle. In addition to her research, she’s involved in local K-12 outreach programs and helped launch SoCal BioEYES, which brings basic concepts of biology, including genetics and developmental cell biology lessons, to underserved middle schools in Santa Ana.

As Olga wraps up her dissertation on improving induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) for muscle differentiation, her goal is to become a professor and researcher. “As a graduate student, I’ve had the opportunity to mentor three talented undergraduates, and it’s very fulfilling to see them be successful,” she says. “I don’t imagine myself doing research without teaching and mentoring, or vice versa.”

Discovering Her Passion

Olga’s road to impactful research started at Long Beach City College. She then transferred to California State University Long Beach, where she took a reproductive biology course while earning her BS in molecular biology. “The first day of class, Dr. Kelly Young asked us to write our goals on a notecard,” says Olga. “I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I jokingly wrote, ‘I want to be a famous scientist.’” The next day, Young recruited Olga to join her research lab.

“As I developed my molecular biology skills in the reproduction lab, I was also refining my interests in science,” says Olga. “I took a stem cell biology course and became impressed with the idea of generating personalized medicine.” With Young’s support, Olga applied for the biotechnology certification program and was awarded a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) scholarship to perform stem cell research at UC Irvine in the lab of Edwin Monuki, MD, PhD.

“I knew I wanted to study regenerative medicine, and I landed in a lab that studies skeletal muscle, one of the most regenerative tissues in our body,” says Olga. “This experience, and occasional science chats with project scientist Dr. Brett Johnson, solidified my interest in pursuing a PhD.”

Her PhD research focuses on understanding the cell fates of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) and the genetic pathways that are required to make skeletal muscle cells. “The overarching goal is to be able to replace damaged skeletal muscle over a lifetime with the transplantation of patient-specific muscle stem cells generated from hPSCs,” says Olga. The challenge is accounting for differences between individuals.

Now working in the research lab of Michael Ryan Hicks, PhD, she is focused on studying prenatal muscle development to help address the gaps in understanding muscle development. “My investigations revealed that transcriptional repression of SIX1, a gene that regulates embryonic development, prevents muscle progenitors from developing, and its expression can help distinguish successful muscle derivations,” she explains. “I identify optimal microenvironments for robust differentiation of hPSCs into pre-myogenic progenitors.” This work thus directly impacts our ability to generate clinical-grade skeletal muscle cells.

“I am excited that we now have in our hands a SIX1-GFP reporter hPSC line to refine our understanding of how SIX1 drives myogenesis — the development of skeletal muscle tissue,” says Olga. “We can then apply what we learn to understand how congenital defects related to SIX1-related pathways arise.”

One congenital birth defect that’s caused by disruptions of SIX1 signaling is Branchiootorenal (BOR) syndrome, which causes hearing loss, facial and neck muscle malformations, and chronic kidney disease. “Interestingly, during the differentiation to skeletal muscle, other mesodermal tissues arise such as cartilage, bone and kidney,” says Olga, “and this in-vitro environment offers a perfect model to study embryonic and fetal development.”

Paying It Forward

Olga is excited about her work, and she enjoys sharing that enthusiasm with others. “As an incoming PhD student, I wanted to get involved in outreach,” she says. “I understood that I was incredibly fortunate to be in the position of pursuing higher education.”

Working with Michael Parsons, PhD, she helped launch BioEYES at UC Irvine. The program aims to improve science education by bringing basic principles of genetics and development to underserved schools using live zebrafish.

“I remember my first time seeing the beating heart of a zebrafish under the scope as a first-year graduate student, and I was ecstatic,” says Olga. “I couldn’t begin to imagine the positive reactions this hands-on experience would elicit in young children.”

So, she worked on a grant proposal for SoCal BioEYES. Recounting her own experiences going through underserved K-12 schools and the impact of teachers who go above and beyond, she wrote about how classroom-based experiences in these schools can change student trajectories.

Once the grant was approved, Olga volunteered to train teachers and support students at El Sol Academy, a K-8 school where 95% of students are Hispanic and 65% are socioeconomically disadvantaged. “By working with both teachers and students, and recruiting and training other graduate students,” she says, “I felt like I was giving back to my community.”

Olga has also volunteered with Reach-Out Teach-Out and served as a representative for the Diverse Educational Community and Doctoral Experience (DECADE) program at UC Irvine.

When she’s not in the lab or mentoring others, Olga is listening to true crime podcasts, reading science fiction (particularly works by Victor Villaseñor, Octavia Butler, Ottessa Moshfegh and Khaled Hosseini), or spending time outdoors. Her family introduced her to camping when she was a child, and she has since visited every national park in California. She hopes to eventually camp in all 63 U.S. national parks.

Olga also hopes to continue paying forward all the support she has received over the years, from both her family and many mentors. She highlights her mom’s unwavering support (and delicious cooking), as well as the family fundraiser that helped get her to college in the first place. She expresses gratitude for the teachers who guided her, from Mr. Torres in elementary school and Ms. Montooth in high school; to Professor Figueroa at Long Beach City College and Dr. Young at CSULB; to Dr. Monuki, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Parsons at UC Irvine. And she thanks her husband, Arturo, for being her kind-hearted cheerleader and for accompanying her to the lab every weekend to feed her stem cells.

“I have been very lucky to have them all shape my journey,” says Olga. “Through my experiences, I’ve learned to be resilient, have tenacity and be humble, and I think that these qualities stand out in everything I do, from research, to mentorship and outreach.”