The characters of rat on physiology, behavior and metabolism are more similar with human being compared with that of mouse. With the development of rat genetic engineering techniques in recent years, the genetic modified rats have been a hot point of laboratory animal science and back to the life science and pharmaceutical research. The advantages and disadvantages of the transgene, transposon, ZFN (zinc finger enzymes), TALENs and embryonic stem cell-based gene targeting were compared in this review paper.