Evaluating efficiency and robustness in cilia design

Motile cilia are used by many eukaryotic cells to transport flow. Cilia-driven flows are important to many physiological functions, yet a deep understanding of the interplay between the mechanical structure of cilia and their physiological functions in healthy and diseased conditions remains elusive. For developing such understanding, one needs a quantitative framework for assessing cilia performance and robustness when subject to perturbations in the cilia apparatus. Here, we link cilia design (beating patterns) to function (flow transport) in the context of experimentally- and theoretically-derived cilia models. We particularly examine the optimality and robustness of cilia design. Optimality refers to efficiency of flow transport, while robustness is defined as low sensitivity to variations in the design parameters. We find that suboptimal designs can be more robust than optimal ones. That is, designing for the most efficient cilium does not guarantee robustness. These findings have significant implications on the understanding of cilia design in artificial and biological systems.