The investigation of molecular evidence of gastric carcinoma will be contributable to the prevention, gene diagnosis and therapy of human gastric neoplasms. To determine the specific genetic change in human gastric cancer (HGC) and precancerous lesions, we analysized FISH, PCR/SSCP, IHC and DNA sequencing by using multiple probes to detect the gene abnormalities (mutation, deletion, amplification or overexpression of genes) of 67 fresh tumors, 63 endoscopic biopsies including 30 dysplasia (DYS) and 33 intestinal metaplasia (IM, and 4 tumor cell lines from HGC patients. Multiple genetic abnormalities including hypomethylation of H-ras gene, amplification and overexpression of met and erbB2, deletion of APC, mts1/p16, p53 and nm23 gene and point mutation of p53 gene were noted in HGC and precancerous lesion of human gastric mucosa. Among these changes, p53 gene was the highest frequence genetic alteration in 39/67 (54-58%) of gastric carcinoma. These results indicate that overexpression of met and H-ras occurs at early stage in progression of neoplasia, amplification of met, erbB2 and akt2 gene occurs at progressing stage of tumorigenesis, deletion of p53, APC, mts1/p16 and nm23 occurs at advanced stage in the progression of cancer. The abnormalities should be associated with malignant phenotypes: poor differentiation, vascular invasion, lymph nodes metastasis, and low survival time. We detected p53 gene mutation in both cancer and precancerous lesions of IM and DYS. These results suggest that p53 may be a susceptible gene and alteration of p53 gene plays an important role in the development of HGC.