Abstract: ASR（the abscisic acid，stress，ripening protein）proteins are a suite of important family proteins found in organisms，which are generally involved in osmoregulation. They will be induced in plants under stress conditions，such as drought，low temperature，salt stress and ABA. The overexpression of ASR proteins can reduce plant injure by stress. ASR proteins can stabilize the cell membrane structure，and as molecular chaperones，can combine ions and prevent oxidation. In current paper，the classification and structure of ASR proteins，encoding genes，the expression and regulation of ASR proteins，and the relationship among ASR gene expression，ASR protein accumulation and plant stress tolerance has been summarized.

Key words: ASR proteins, gene expression and regulation, stress conditions, stress tolerance