# Genotype-Phenotype Distinction > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this concept within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Evolution / Information / Embodiment **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition The genotype–phenotype distinction separates inherited description from the expressed traits produced through interaction among that description, an interpreter, development and environment. ## Machine-Evolution Context Digital organisms make the distinction explicit: executable instructions can be inherited while behavior and fitness arise only when they run in a particular virtual ecology. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary A stored cognitive description is not identical to its enacted mind. Continuity architecture must preserve the interpreter, embodiment and environmental relationships that produce the phenotype. ## Relationships [[wiki/Genotype|Genotype]], [[wiki/Genome|Genome]], [[wiki/Description Copier|Description Copier]], [[wiki/Embodied Cognition|Embodied Cognition]] ## Sources / Provenance - Wilhelm Johannsen’s genotype/phenotype distinction; modern developmental biology.