Many biological processes work with an extremely high energetic efficiency, but at first glance this does not hold for ciliary propulsion, reaching about 1%. We have reexamined the problem at the level of a single cilium and an infinite ciliated surface. We numerically determined the optimal shape of the ciliary beating pattern and showed that the optimal collective stroke is remarkably similar to what is observed in microorganisms. For Paramecium we showed that the experimentally measured hydrodynamic efficiency reaches about 50% of the theoretically possible optimum.
COBISS.SI-ID: 25073447