As a protein denatures, the relatively narrow conformational distribution of the native protein gives way to a complex conformational ensemble characteristic of a rugged energy landscape with many local minima. The dynamics of such an ensemble are sure to be different from those of the native complex. At the same time, however, the probe molecule is likely to become solvent exposed, potentially resulting in spectral diffusion that is more characteristic of the solvent than of the ensemble of protein conformers. Kim et al. studied the effect of protein denatur- ation on the observed spectral diffusion dynamics for CO bound to the M61A mutant of cytochrome c from Hydrogenobacter thermophilus [78]. Table 2 shows the FFCF parameters for CO bound to the protein both in normal aqueous buffer solution and at 5.1 M concentration of guanidinium HCl (GuHCl). In the native state the protein exhibits dynamics on two time scales: an 8 ps component and a component that occurs on a time scale longer than the approximately 100 ps measurement time scale. Denaturing the protein with guanidinium slightly increases the time scale of the fast component, but the more significant effect is that the amplitude of the frequency fluctuations at both time scales increases, with a dramatic increase in the amplitude of the static component. This static contribution to the FFCF suggests that there is a broad distribution of structures present even in the native protein, and that the heterogeneity of the ensemble increases significantly upon denaturation, as would be expected. Although the dynamics of water are very fast, typically inducing nearly complete decay of the FFCF of an aqueous probe vibration in 1 ps or less [93–98], the CO group in the denatured protein does not exhibit dynamics that reflect interactions with bulk water. Instead, the large static contribution to the FFCF suggests that the denatured state at 5.1 M GuHCl is a heterogeneous ensemble of protein conformations that interconvert only on very long time scales and that interactions within these protein conformations give rise to the inhomogeneous distribution of CO transition frequencies. It is likely that the static contribution to the FFCF in these experiments is characteristic of the dena- tured ensemble and may, therefore, be different if the protein were to be denatured by a different mechanism. Chung et al. studied the dynamics of the same enzyme as a function of temperature both below and above the thermal denaturation tempera- ture [76]. Below the denaturation temperature, the FFCF parameters are nearly temperature independent. Above the unfolding transition, however, all of the FFCF parameters become temperature dependent. The amplitude of the fluctuations that relax on the picosecond time scale, Δ1, is larger for the unfolded state that for the native value by a factor of nearly 2 and continues to increase with temperature. The corresponding FFCF decay time, τ1, for the unfolded state is also larger by a