Production of mature mRNA consists of a highly complex pathway of synthesis, and errors often happen. Both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells have evolved remarkable surveillance mechanisms acting at several steps of mRNA biogenesis, even after translation initiation, to control mRNA quality. In eukaryotic cells, there are 4 translation-dependent mRNA surveillance pathways in cytoplasm, including nonsense-mediated decay(NMD), no-go decay (NGD), non-stop decay (NSD) and ribosome extension-mediated decay(REMD). These mRNA surveillance systems not only contribute to recognize and rapidly degrades aberrant mRNAs, but also play an essential role in gene regulation, and associated with several human diseases. In this review, recent achievements in the investigation of eukaryotic mRNA surveillance pathways will be discussed, and their application perspective will also be speculated.