  We have calculated the binding energy of various nucleobases (guanine (G),
adenine (A), thymine (T) and cytosine (C)) with (5,5) single-walled carbon
nanotubes (SWNTs) using ab-initio Hartre-Fock method (HF) together with force
field calculations. The gas phase binding energies follow the sequence G $>$ A
$>$ T $>$ C. We show that main contribution to binding energy comes from
van-der Wall (vdW) interaction between nanotube and nucleobases. We compare
these results with the interaction of nucleobases with graphene. We show that
the binding energy of bases with SWNTs is much lower than the graphene but the
sequence remains same. When we include the effect of solvation energy
(Poisson-Boltzman (PB) solver at HF level), the binding energy follow the
sequence G $>$ T $>$ A $>$ C $>$, which explains the experiment\cite{zheng}
that oligonucleotides made of thymine bases are more effective in dispersing
the SWNT in aqueous solution as compared to poly (A) and poly (C). We also
demonstrate experimentally that there is differential binding affinity of
nucleobases with the single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) by directly
measuring the binding strength using isothermal titration (micro) calorimetry.
The binding sequence of the nucleobases varies as thymine (T) $>$ adenine (A)
$>$ cytosine (C), in agreement with our calculation.
