If you've ever eaten food while upside down - and who hasn't indulged this chimpanzee daydream? - you can thank the successive wave-like motions of peristalsis for keeping the chewed bolus down and ferrying it into your stomach. In mechanical microdevices, this method of transport moves fluids without a separate pump- saving precious space in lab-on-a-chip and futuristic organ-on-a-chip devices - but this transport method is difficult to finely control.
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