Optimality of contraction-driven crawling
Biological Physics
2015-06-18 v2
Abstract
We study a model of cell motility where the condition of optimal trade-off between performance and metabolic cost can be made precise. In this model a steadily crawling fragment is represented by a layer of active gel placed on a frictional surface and driven by contraction only. We find analytically the distribution of contractile elements (pullers) ensuring that the efficiency of self-propulsion is maximal. We then show that natural assumptions about advection and diffusion of pullers produce a distribution that is remarkably close to the optimal one and is qualitatively similar to the one observed in experiments on fish keratocytes.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1402.0673,
title = {Optimality of contraction-driven crawling},
author = {P. Recho and J. -F. Joanny and L. Truskinovsky},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.0673},
year = {2015}
}