Number of beating cilia on the entire surface of a single cell

Value 10000 beating cilia/cell
Organism Ciliate Paramecium caudatum
Reference Katsu-Kimura Y, Nakaya F, Baba SA, Mogami Y. Substantial energy expenditure for locomotion in ciliates verified by means of simultaneous measurement of oxygen consumption rate and swimming speed. J Exp Biol. 2009 Jun212(Pt 12):1819-24. doi: 10.1242/jeb.028894. p.1822 right column 2nd paragraphPubMed ID19482999
Primary Source Gueron, S. and Levit-Gurevich, K. (1999). Energetic considerations of ciliary beating and the advantage of metachronal coordination. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 96, 12240-12245.PubMed ID10535905
Comments "Paramecium gains propulsive thrust from beating cilia, by which metabolic energy is converted to the mechanical work. Gueron and Levit-Gurevich computed the mechanical thrust of Paramecium cilia beating in metachronal coordination with neighboring cilia (primary source). If we take 2X10^–16 J to be the mechanical work per cilium per beat [cf. fig. 2 in (primary source)], the total power of beating cilia on the entire surface of a single cell (10^4 cilia beating at 40 Hz) can be estimated to be 2.9X10^–7J/hour. This means that the conversion of the mechanical power of ciliary beating to propulsive power (StP) may be far less efficient (0.77%) than that of the conversion of the Ps [swimming power] to the mechanical power of ciliary beating (10.1%). Remarkably low efficiency of energy expenditure is one of the characteristics of Paramecium swimming in the mechanical environment governed by a viscous drag, where large dissipation of the kinetic energy is inevitable in the interaction with surrounding water." See Martinac et al., 2008 PMID 18923187 p.1451 right column bottom paragraph:"A single Paramecium cell is covered by approx. 5,000 cilia and cell membrane is covered by a thick extracellular matrix consisting mainly of the "immobilization antigen" protein (ref 228)." See BNID 112283
Entered by Uri M
ID 110791