At the turn of the twentieth century, Edmund B. Wilson performed experiments to show where germinal matter was located in molluscs. At Columbia University in New York City, New York, Wilson studied what causes cells to differentiate during development. In 1904 he conducted his experiments on molluscs, and he modified the theory about the location of germinal matter in the succeeding years. Wilson and others modified the theory of germinal localization to accommodate results that showed the significance of chromosomes in development and heredity.

In 2015, Junjiu Huang and his colleagues reported their attempt to enable CRISPR/cas 9-mediated gene editing in nonviable human zygotes for the first time at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China. Their article, CRISPR /Cas9-mediated Gene Editing in Human Tripronuclear Zygotes, was published in Protein and Cell. Nonviable zygotes are sperm-fertilized eggs that cannot develop into a fetus. Researchers previously developed the CRISPR/cas 9 gene editing tool, which is a system that originated from bacteria as a defense mechanism against viruses. In their article, Huang and his team demonstrate that CRISPR/cas-9 gene editing can be used to correct a mutation in zygotes, or sperm-fertilized egg cells. However, they report that using CRISPR/cas 9 to edit those nonviable human zygotes led to off-target changes and, therefore, to unintended mutations in the human genome. Before Huang and his colleagues' experiment, CRISPR/cas 9 had never been used on human zygotes. In their article, Huang and his colleagues demonstrated the need to improve CRISPR/cas 9 gene editing accuracy before using it for gene therapy to treat and correct genetic diseases in humans.

“Test-tube baby” is a term used to refer to a baby produced through artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization, also called IVF. During artificial insemination, a physician injects carefully selected sperm into a women’s uterus to fertilize her eggs. During IVF, a trained professional harvests eggs from a female donor. Those eggs are fertilized with carefully selected sperm in a petri dish.