Non-covalent chemosensing ensembles of cucurbit[n]urils (CBn) have been widely used in proof-of-concept sensing applications, but they are prone to disintegrate in saline media, e.g. biological fluids. We show here that...

Achiral chromophoric tweezer-shaped molecular hosts were found to respond with characteristic Circular Dichroism spectra to the presence of micromolar concentrations of chiral hydrocarbons, terpenes, steroids, amino acids and drugs in water.