Escherichia coli is widely used for expressing recombinant proteins, and several tags have been developed to improve protein solubility. However, expressing and purifying protein from other organisms is not always successful. In this study, we investigated the possibility of using TtrD as an expressing fusion tag in E. coli. Twenty RING finger domain containing human genes were expressed in E. coli grown at 37 degrees C and 18 degrees C and tested with four other fusion tags, namely His, SUMO, GST and MBP, for comparison. The results indicated that the soluble expressing ability of the tags was MBP, GST, TtrD, SUMO, and His in descending order. A one-column refolding process was used to purify the expressed proteins in inclusion bodies, and TtrD showed the strongest refolding ability. The results suggested that the TtrD tag enhanced recombinant protein solubility and refolding ability and might be a useful tag for protein expression in E. coli. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc.