This invention provides a recombinant protein expression system using a
host and cell-free translation system, and is capable of universally
expressing a large amount of any protein as soluble protein, while
preventing toxicity in hosts, formation of inclusion bodies, and
decompositions with proteases. Such may be achieved by expressing the
desired protein as a fusion protein with chaperoning, such as about 60
kDa molecular chaperons, 60 kDa heat shock proteins, or thermosomes, and
accommodating the desired protein inside of a stereostructure of a
chaperonin. The present invention provides a process for producing a
protein, which comprises transcribing and translating a gene containing a
gene encoding the linked chaperonin subunits and a gene encoding a
desired protein thereby synthesizing a fusion protein having the desired
protein linked via a peptide linkage to the linked chaperonin subunits.