Amino acid is a fundamental material that organisms need,and its analysis is one of the most important technologies in life sciences.Owning the advantages of rapidness,easy operation,high detection sensitivity and wide application,the high performance liquid chromatography(HPLC) is widely used in many fields,such as food industry,pharmaceutical industry and life science research.In this article,the HPLC analytical methods of amino acids,including post column derivatization,pre column derivatization,high performance anion exchange chromatography with integrated pulsed amperometric detection and HPLC with evaporative light scattering detection,are reviewed.The characteristics of these methods are compared,which could provide a reference for the related research analysis.