Abstract: As an important protein modification method,phosphorylation can effectively improve the functional properties of food proteins,such as emulsification,solubility,gelation,thermal stability,etc. The methods of phosphorylation can be divided into enzymatic and non-enzymatic phosphorylation. For enzymatic phosphorylation,the protein kinase that is used for protein phosphorylation mainly includes cyclic adenosine monophosphate dependent protein kinase(CAMPdPK)and casein kinase II(CK-II). For non-enzymatic phosphorylation,the reagents that are used for protein phosphorylation,such as phosphorus oxychloride,sodium pyrophosphate,sodium tripolyphosphate and glucose-6-phosphate are introduced. In this article,the recent research of protein phosphorylation was reviewed. The reaction mechanism of different phosphorylation reagent was discussed by identifying the phosphate linkages,the phosphopeptides and phosphorylation sites from phosphorylated proteins. Furthermore,the effects of different phosphorylation reagents on the structure-function relationship of phosphorylated proteins were discussed. This article provides a theoretical basis and reference for the improvement of specific functional properties of proteins through directional phosphorylation modification.