# Heritable Information > **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 **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Heritable information is organization that can be transmitted into descendants and can influence their resulting traits or behavior. ## Machine-Evolution Context In biology it includes nucleic-acid sequences and inherited regulatory structure; in digital evolution it can be executable instruction sequences or reproducible cellular states. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary Persistence, copying and meaning depend on an interpreter and environment. A bit pattern alone is not an organism, a functioning mind or a continuity proof. ## Relationships [[wiki/Information Inheritance|Information Inheritance]], [[wiki/Genome|Genome]], [[wiki/Description Copier|Description Copier]], [[wiki/Hot Interpreter and Cold Archive|Hot Interpreter and Cold Archive]] ## Sources / Provenance - John Maynard Smith, “The Concept of Information in Biology”; von Neumann (1966).