Abstract: Engineered nucleases enable precisely modify the complex genomes in a wide range of cell types and organisms. Transcription activator-like effector nuclease（TALEN）is a new molecular biology tool. TALEN can interrupt the target genome DNA sequences at specific point effectively，so it is also used to edit target DNA such as knock-out，knock-in，nucleotide substitutions，point mutation，etc. Recently，with the deepening of the research and transformation of TALEN system，it is successfully applied in many types of model organisms like the human cells， mice，zebrafish with broad application prospect. In this paper，the principle，structure and applications of TALEN were reviewed，and the future development of TALEN was prospected.