BACKGROUND:Poultry mesenchymal stem cels are a particular subset of pluripotent adult stem cels derived from the mesoderm, which have great application prospects because of their strong proliferation and multi-directional differentiation potential. OBJECTIVE:To review the source, separation, purification, culture and differentiation of poultry mesenchymal stem cels, and to provide the theoretical foundation and experimental basis for the further research and application of poultry mesenchymal stem cels. METHODS:PubMed and CNKI databases were searched by the first author using key words of “mesenchymal stem cels, poultry, chicken, isolation, culture, differentiation” in English and in Chinese, respectively, to retrieve relevant articles published from 1990 to 2014. Literatures addressing induced poultry mesenchymal stem cels were included, and 42 articles were chosen for further analysis eventualy. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Poultry mesenchymal stem cels have great application prospects in the aspects of establishingin vitro model of poultry cels, studying poultry disease pathogenesis, animal nutrition and meat quality control. Its origin source is wide and easy to obtain. Isolation, purification, culture and biological characteristics of mesenchymal stem cels from different tissues are different. But, the study on poultry mesenchymal stem cels is stil in the exploration process, and there are many technical problems to be solved.