Abstract: As a result of antibiotics abuse, bacterial resistance and antibiotics residues in food have become growing problems. It is urgent to find new antibacterial drugs to deal with these problems. However, It takes long cycle and high cost to develop new antibiotics, besides, resistance and residues are inevitable when using antibiotics. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has thousands years application history in our country, anti-bacterial anti-inflammatory effect of some TCM have been proved by modern science. In addition,  TCM has many merits, such as, cheap, non-toxic, non-residues, non-resistance and so on. However, current studies focused on separation and extraction of active ingredients, or preliminary antibacterial effect. This paper summarized the main principles, research methods and achievements of TCM antibacterial mechanisms from cell wall and cell membrane, protein and genetic material, and respiratory metabolism in order to provide a reference for conducting relative studies.

Key words: traditional Chinese medicine, antibacterial mechanism, research methods

摘要： 由于抗生素的滥用，使得细菌耐药性和食品中药物残留的问题日益严重，迫切需要寻找新的抗菌药物来应对上述问题。新抗生素开发周期长、费用高，并且易产生耐药性和药物残留等，而中药在我国已经有几千年的应用历史，多种中药具有的抗菌消炎作用也已被现代科学研究所证明。中药还具有低价、无毒、无残留和不易产生耐药性等优点。从细胞壁和细胞膜、蛋白质和遗传物质及呼吸代谢三个方面总结了中药抑菌机制的作用原理、研究方法和已取得的成果，以期为开展此类研究提供参考。

关键词: 中药, 抑菌机制, 研究方法