ABSTRACT
In order to establish the foundation for modernization of Chinese herbal medicine, discovery of the functional genes related with the bioactive components of Chinese herbs and the rules of their expression was progressed for determining the regulatory mechanism, obtaining the core metabolic pathway and key regulatory factors of the medicinal components synthesis. In this article, the studies about plant's functional genes at home and abroad was introduced in three aspects: the pattern plants (rice, thaliana, etc.), the main technologic strategy (gene expression differentia, sequential tag of gene expression, DNA microarray technique and gene expression sequential analysis) and bio-informative method (comparative genomics). The current status of researches involving biosynthesis genes of flavonoids compounds and taxol, and the plant P450 genes were introduced. And the study of dendrobium functional genes conducted in authors' lab was also reviewed.