Abstract: Yellow leaf mutation are ideal materials for basic research with high mutation frequency and easily identi-fied in nature. They also have important value in variety breeding and improvement. Functions and mechanisms of genes related to leaf color mutation were reviewed from perspectives of chlorophyll synthesis,heme metabolism,chloroplast development and chloroplast protein metabolism. The current researches on mechanism of leaf mutants focused on the functions of genes related to leaf color mutation,but nucleoplasm signal transduction,transcription factor and regulatory element were only studied by a few. Therefore,in the future,leaf mutants,which is ideal materials,can be used to study the function of the related genes and their interactions,and switch the research from single gene to multiple genes or even functional genomes,especially strengthen the study in nucleoplasm signal transduction,transcription factor and regulato-ry element. As a special germplasm resource,leaf mutants can increase plant mutation frequency through artificial induc-tion,obtain large amount of leaf mutants within short period of time and apply them into the study in interactions between gene functions and genes,and proude reference for yellow leaf plants breeding and gentic improvement.