Clone (cell biology)
group of identical cells that share a common ancestry
A clone is a group of identical cells that share a common ancestry, meaning they are derived from the same cell.
Clonality implies the state of a cell or a substance being derived from one source or the other. Thus there are terms like polyclonal—derived from many clones; oligoclonal—derived from a few clones; and monoclonal—derived from one clone. These terms are most commonly used in context of antibodies or immunocytes.
Contexts
This concept of clone assumes importance as all the cells that form a clone share common ancestry, which has a very significant consequence: shared genotype.
One of the most prominent usage is in describing a clone of B cells. The B cells in the body have two important phenotypes (functional forms)—the antibody secreting, terminally differentiated (that is, they cannot divide further) plasma cells, and the memory and the naive cells—both of which retain their proliferative potential.
Another important area where one can talk of "clones" of cells is neoplasms. Many of the tumors derive from one (sufficiently) mutated cell, so they are technically a single clone of cells. However, during course of cell division, one of the cells can get mutated further and acquire new characteristics to diverge as a new clone.
The public source identifies “Clone (cell biology)” as group of identical cells that share a common ancestry. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Clone, cell and biology.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3308178. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clone (cell biology)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.