Abstract: Bioactive peptides (BAP) are beneficial to the life activities of biological organisms. They are peptide compounds with relative molecular weight ranging from 50 to10 000 Da and have a series of physiological functions. BAP are easy to be digested and absorbed in human and animal bodies. In addition to antibacterial and antivirus actions, they display various biological activities such as blood pressure and cholesterol lowering, immunity enhancing and hormone regulating. Furthermore, BAP also play important roles in physiological regulation and biological metabolism. BAP have a great developmental prospect and have become a hot research topic in the field of food, feed production and biomedicine all over the world. In the future, the researches associated with BAP will focus on their high-efficient preparation and application, especially on their fermentation preparation. This article gave a detailed introduction of BAP from the aspects of research history, physiological function as well as preparation and application, and the future development of BAP was also prospected.

Key words: bioactive peptide, function, fermentation method