Final answer:
Cloning is the biological process through which organisms produce genetically identical individuals. It's common in nature with asexual reproducing organisms, such as bacteria which undergo cellular cloning. Reproductive cloning has also allowed scientists to clone multicellular organisms in labs.
Step-by-step explanation:
Cloning is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects, or plants reproduce asexually. In this biological process, organisms create exact genetic replicas of themselves without the genetic inputs from a second organism which is the case in sexual reproduction.
Bacteria and other unicellular organisms like yeast undergo cellular cloning through mechanisms such as binary fission, where the parent cell splits into two identical daughter cells, each with an exact copy of the parent’s DNA. Some multicellular organisms can also reproduce asexually through methods like budding or fragmentation, leading to genetically identical offspring.
Reproductive cloning in a laboratory setting allows for the creation of identical copies of multicellular organisms. This biotechnological advance differs from natural asexual reproduction and has resulted in the successful cloning of animals like Dolly the sheep, which was the first cloning of a large mammal.