  Genetic information is stored in a linear sequence of base-pairs; however,
thermal fluctuations and complex DNA conformations such as folds and loops make
it challenging to order genomic material for in vitro analysis. In this work,
we discover that rotation-induced macromolecular spooling of DNA around a
rotating microwire can monotonically order genomic bases, overcoming this
challenge. We use single-molecule fluorescence microscopy to directly visualize
long DNA strands deforming and elongating in shear flow near a rotating
microwire, in agreement with numerical simulations. While untethered DNA is
observed to elongate substantially, in agreement with our theory and numerical
simulations, strong extension of DNA becomes possible by introducing tethering.
For the case of tethered polymers, we show that increasing the rotation rate
can deterministically spool a substantial portion of the chain into a fully
stretched, single-file conformation. When applied to DNA, the fraction of
genetic information sequentially ordered on the microwire surface will increase
with the contour length, despite the increased entropy. This ability to handle
long strands of DNA is in contrast to modern DNA sample preparation
technologies for sequencing and mapping, which are typically restricted to
comparatively short strands resulting in challenges in reconstructing the
genome. Thus, in addition to discovering new rotation-induced macromolecular
dynamics, this work inspires new approaches to handling genomic-length DNA
strands.
