Although the origins of cutting are uncertain, there are records of its use dating from the Middle Ages. Tissue culture came into commercial use in the 1950's, primarily to reproduce orchids, and in the 1970's its use with other plants became widespread.

Frogs were the first animals to be cloned using embryonic cells, in the early 1950's. By the early 1980's embryonic cell techniques were being used to clone laboratory animals, including mice; and livestock, including cattle and sheep. By the late 1990's researchers had developed cloning methods that used adult animal cells. In 1996 a lamb (called Dolly) was the first vertebrate cloned from an adult body cell. In 1998 researchers cloned dozens of mice from adult body cells. The resulting mouse clones were then themselves cloned, producing multiple generations of cloned mice. In 2000, researchers cloned a pig using an adult body cell, creating a litter of five clones. The techniques eventually developed in such experiments could potentially be used to engineer pig organs for transplants into humans.

The advances in cloning techniques in the late 1990's increased the likelihood that human beings could be cloned, raising concerns about the ethics of doing so. In response to such concerns, several nations banned government-funded research into cloning humans. In 2000, Great Britain granted a patent to a United States company for a specific cloning process and for the human embryos resulting from the process for their first few days of development. In 2004, a few scientists began to use nuclear-transfer techniques to produce human embryos that were clones of adults. Stem cells (unspecialized cells that can develop into various types of tissue) were then extracted from these embryos for medical research.