Acute kidney injury (AKI), as a common clinical symptom, is closely related to the occurrence of chronic kidney disease and poor prognosis of severe patients. An important clinical indicator of AKI is increased serum creatinine, and common important risk factors for AKI include sepsis and low blood volume. In 2012, KDIGO (kidney disease improving global outcomes) introduced the clinical practice guidelines for AKI, providing more detailed evidence based medical evidence for clinical understanding and treatment of AKI. However, early prediction of molecular markers of AKI, pathophysiological mechanism characteristics of AKI occurrence, and serological and histological characteristics of AKI progression are very scarce in clinical and basic studies. Based on the review of the KDIGO guidelines on AKI, this paper reviewed the literatures related to the basic researches on AKI in recent years, focusing on the characteristics of AKI occurrence mechanism and molecular diagnostic markers, so as to provide knowledge reserves and direction references for further studies on AKI.