Objective To investigate the actions of apoptotic pathways in rat liver regeneration (LR) at the transcription level. Methods The apoptosis genes were obtained by referring to the putative literatures and databases. Apoptoticrelated genes expression profiles in rat LR were checked by Rat Genome 230 2.0 array. Identification of LR-associated genes was made by comparing the discrepancies of genes expression between partial hepatectomied (PH) and sham operatied (SO) rats. Results 252 genes were found to be related to liver regeneration. The initial and total expressing gene numbers occurring in the initiation phase of liver regeneration (0.54hours after PH), GSUB>0/SUB>/GSUB>1/SUB> transition (4-6hours after PH), cell proliferation (6-66hours after PH), cell differentiation and structurefunction reconstruction (72-168hours after PH) were 81,23,155,16 and 161,100,733,192 respectively. This demonstrated that LR-related genes primarily started their expression in the initiation phase, and worked in the different phases. The total times of their up-and down-regulated expression were 795 and 291, demonstrating that expression of most genes was enhanced in LR. Their expression patterns could be classified into 35 types, indicating the expressions of apoptosisrelated genes in LR were diverse and complicated. Conclusion There are fifteen kinds of apoptosis pathways that associate to apoptosis regulat