The engineering application of natural hyperaccumulators in removing or inactivating metal pollutants from soil and surface water in field trials mostly presents the insurmountable shortcoming of low efficiency owing to their little biomass and slow growth. Based on further understanding of the molecular mechanism of metal uptake, translocation, and also the separation, identification, and cloning of some related functional genes, this article highlights and summarizes in detail the advances in research on transgenic techniques, such as Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation and par...