Sugar moiety driven adsorption of nucleic acid on graphene quantum dots: Photophysical, thermodynamic and theoretical evidence

•The interactions of DNA and its components with GQDs are investigated from experimental and theoretical perspectives.•The present work demonstrates important role of sugar moiety in adsorption of DNA on GQD framework.•It has been demonstrated that adenosine group is the most favored site for adsorption.•There is significant enthalpy entropy compensation between ssDNA and GQDs with positive intercept and near unit slope.•Fundamental and physicochemical understanding may provide useful insights on successful biomedical applications of GQDs.