Also living things. I sometimes wonder just how much of the information that determine an organism is stored not in DNA, but hidden in the "runtime" state of the replication mechanism. After all, when a new cell is made, the parent replication mechanism also builds the child's replication mechanism.
Related - Hofstadter's GEB, where he discusses the observation that information is not stored on a storage medium - it's a function of the medium and the mechanism reading that medium.
I once went to a hypno-therapist who did a germ-line regression (as contrasted with a "past-life" regression) where I was lead back in time through my familial linage to talk one of my ancestors. YMMV
> Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene function that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence.
Related - Hofstadter's GEB, where he discusses the observation that information is not stored on a storage medium - it's a function of the medium and the mechanism reading that medium.