replicator

n. Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself; this could be a
living organism, an idea (see meme ), a program (see quine , worm , wabbit ,
fork bomb , and virus ), a pattern in a cellular automaton (see life , sense
1), or (speculatively) a robot or nanobot. It is even claimed by some that
Unix and C are the symbiotic halves of an extremely successful replicator;
see Unix conspiracy.