We report here studies of tryptophan (Trp) solvation dynamics in water and in the Pyrococcus furiosus rubredoxin protein, including the native and its apo and denatured forms. We also report results on energy transfer from Trp to the iron-sulfur [Fe-S] cluster. Trp fluorescence decay with the onset of solvation dynamics of the chromophore in water was observed with femtosecond resolution (Ϸ160 fs; 65% component), but the emission extended to the picosecond range (1.1 ps; 35% component). In contrast, the decay is much slower in the native rubredoxin; the Trp fluorescence decay extends to 10 ps and longer, reflecting the local rigidity imposed by residues and by the surface water layer. The dynamics of resonance energy transfer from the two Trps to the [Fe-S] cluster in the protein was observed to follow a temporal behavior characterized by a single exponential (15-20 ps) decay. This unusual observation in a protein indicates that the resonance transfer is to an acceptor of a well-defined orientation and separation. From studies of the mutant protein, we show that the two Trp residues have similar energy-transfer rates. The critical distance for transfer (R 0) was determined, by using the known x-ray data, to be 19.5 Å for Trp-36 and 25.2 Å for Trp-3, respectively. The orientation factor ( 2 ) was deduced to be 0.13 for Trp-36, clearly indicating that molecular orientation of chromophores in the protein cannot be isotropic with 2 value of 2͞3. These studies of solvation and energy-transfer dynamics, and of the rotational anisotropy, of the wild-type protein, the (W3Y, I23V, L32I) mutant, and the fmetPfRd variant at various pH values reveal a dynamically rigid protein structure, which is probably related to the hyperthermophilicity of the protein.T ryptophan (Trp) is the most important fluorophore among amino acid residues for optical probing of proteins. However, Trp fluorescence is complex because of different rotamers in the ground state and the two nearly degenerate electronic states ( 1 L a , 1 L b ) with perpendicular transition moments. Accordingly, numerous studies (1-10) have focused on the lifetime, quantum yield, Stokes shift, and fluorescence anisotropy. Most of these studies were made with picosecond or nanosecond time resolution (3, 6-10). To probe the local protein dynamics, Trp solvation by neighboring soft͞rigid water molecules, or by other polar amino acid residues, must be resolved on the femtosecond time scale. Moreover, such studies are important for examining the nature of resonance energy transfer (RET) that is used for deducing distances and orientations between the Trp and quenchers in the protein (e.g., see refs. 3 and 10, and references therein).We choose the hyperthermophilic iron-sulfur protein, Pyrococcus furiosus rubredoxin (PfRd), as a prototype system (Fig. 1). The high-resolution x-ray crystallographic structures of PfRd at 0.95 Å and its formylmethionine variant (fmetPfRd) at 1.2 Å, have been recently reported (11). PfRd is a small protein of 53 amino acid residues with an iron a...