Cholic-acid-based fluorescent sensor for dicarboxylates and acidic amino acids in aqueous solutions.

[structure: see text] The binding affinities of a cholic-acid-based fluorescent neutral receptor toward dicarboxylate anions and amino acids have been investigated in a CH3OH/H2O system (1:1, 0.01 M HEPES buffer, pH = 7.4) by fluorescence titration experiments. The synthetic host bearing four convergent functionalities strongly binds glutamate via multiple hydrogen bonds with a binding constant of (5.57 +/- 0.88) x 10(6).