The phrase "cell engineering" was first used in a published paper in 1968 to describe the process of improving fuel cells. The term was then adopted by other papers until the more specific "fuel-cell engineering" was used.
The first use of the term in a biological context was in 1971 in a paper which describes methods to graft reproductive caps between algae cells. Despite the rising popularity of the phrase, there remains unclear boundaries between cell engineering and other forms of biological engineering.