Ubiquitin fusion technology represents an emerging method for economically producing peptides and small proteins in the bacterium Escherichia coli. Our focus is on peptide production where the need for cost-effective, scaleable processes has recently been highlighted by Kelley (1996). There are two principal features: (1) the expression system consists of a suitable E. coli host strain paired with a plasmid that encodes the ubiquitin fusion and (2) an ubiquitin-specific protease, UCH-L3, which cleaves only C-terminal extensions from ubiquitin. In this work, multigram yields were obtained of four ubiquitin fusions derived from cell paste generated in single 10-L fermentations. All were expressed intracellularly and remained soluble at extremely high levels of expression. Bacterial freeze--thaw lysates contained over 95% pure ubiquitin fusion protein. All four fusions were efficiently cleaved to ubiquitin and the peptide products. In one case, the final yield of peptide was 1.08 g from 3 L of low cell density bacterial culture. The combination of exceptional overexpression of the ubiquitin--peptide fusion proteins and a robust and specific protease are unique advantages contributing to a cost-effective, scaleable, and generic bioprocess for peptide production.