After completing her Ph.D., Lillian was a postdoctoral scholar in Professor Dyche Mullins’ lab at UCSF School of Medicine, identifying and characterizing genes required for cell migration, a process important in human development, immunity, cancer metastasis, as well as for single celled organisms that bridge the food chain between bacteria and animals. Lillian has performed a comparative genomics screen that identified 112 gene families conserved only in organisms capable of actin-based cell motility. She also looked at the phenotype of cells depleted of the gene products, using human white blood cells. So far, several novel genes have promising phenotypes, including reduced migration, and aberrant actin structures.