∞ generated and posted on 2015.12.28 ∞
Organisms descended from a single ancestral organism in which sexual processes have not occurred over the course of this descent.
| A Clone is a product of asexual reproduction, whether mitosis or binary fission, and many organisms are clonal though there is a biotechnology connotation to the concept of clone as well. |
A clone is a population of related individuals in which genotypes are identical except for mutations that have occurred since the initiation, by a single individual, of the population. Sexual processes resulting in deviation from clonality are especially those between individuals which otherwise are not clonally derived and thus the resulting recombination will result in individuals whose genotypes are combinations of the parental genotypes.
Generally, if binary fission or mitosis are involved in the generation of a lineage then the lineage is clonal and particularly so if neither meiosis, fertilization, nor horizontal gene transfer has occurred. Note that given sufficient time and population growth a clonal population may sufficiently diverge genotypically that the term clone or at least clonal population may no longer apply.
In microbiology, pure culture technique is the equivalent to the generation of clonal cultures.