We study a particular mechanism of cell motility allowing a precise formulation of the condition of optimal trade-off between performance and metabolic cost. In the 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.

• Received 3 February 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.218101