Monoclonality refers to the state of a line of cells that have been derived from a single clonal origin.
Thus "monoclonal cells" can be said to form a single
clone
Clone or Clones or Cloning or Cloned or The Clone may refer to:
Places
* Clones, County Fermanagh
* Clones, County Monaghan, a town in Ireland
Biology
* Clone (B-cell), a lymphocyte clone, the massive presence of which may indicate a pathologi ...
. The term ''monoclonal'' comes from the
Ancient Greek ''monos'', meaning "alone" or "single", and ''klon'', meaning "twig".
The process of replication can occur ''
in vivo'', or may be stimulated ''
in vitro'' for laboratory manipulations. The use of the term typically implies that there is some method to distinguish between the cells of the original population from which the single ancestral cell is derived, such as a random genetic alteration, which is inherited by the progeny.
Common usages of this term include:
*
Monoclonal antibody: A single
hybridoma cell, which by chance includes the appropriate
V(D)J recombination to produce the desired antibody, is cloned to produce a large population of identical cells. In informal laboratory jargon, the monoclonal antibodies isolated from
cell culture
Cell culture or tissue culture is the process by which cells are grown under controlled conditions, generally outside of their natural environment. The term "tissue culture" was coined by American pathologist Montrose Thomas Burrows. This te ...
supernatants of these hybridoma clones (hybridoma lines) are simply called ''monoclonals''.
* Monoclonal
neoplasm (tumor): A single aberrant cell which has undergone
carcinogenesis reproduces itself into a cancerous mass.
* Monoclonal plasma cell (also called
plasma cell dyscrasia): A single aberrant plasma cell which has undergone carcinogenesis reproduces itself, which in some cases is cancerous.
References
{{reflist
Biology terminology
