I'm reminded of this section of a Douglas Adams quote:

"Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again."

I like how this is not even specific to life nor genes, and it's not hard to add to it the idea of happening-again in ways that make the thing better-or-worse at happening again.

Personally I think this applies to all coherently-causal systems.. still trying to figure out whether to believe QM is fully causal or not! (Currently seems like it might be a mixture?)