Abstract: Black shank is one of the main diseases in tobacco, which causes vast yield loss each year. Black shank is caused by Phytophthora parasitica var. nicotianae which belongs to oomycetes Phytophthora. In recent years, with the rapid development of molecular biology technology, the molecular biology research of tobacco black shank has made big progress. In this review, we summarize the origin, classification, and designation of the pathogen, as well as the research progresses in nuclear genome sequence, mitochondrial genome sequence, and functional genes in recent years. Future perspectives of molecular biology application in tobacco black shank studies are analyzed as well. This review could provide references for researches on pathogenesis of tobacco black shank and molecular breeding of tobacco resistance to blank shank.