Structural inheritance is the transmission of a trait in a living organism by a self-perpetuating spatial structures. This is in contrast to the transmission of digital information such as is found in DNA sequences, which accounts for the vast majority of known genetic variation.
Examples of structural inheritance include the propagation of prions, the infections agents of diseases such as scrapie (in sheep and goats), bovine spongiform encephalopathy ('mad cow disease') and Cr