The self-reproducing systems are considered an evolutionary stage (called biotic or living) among the →self-restructuring and the →self-recreating ones, so that they involve a special case of self-restructuring systems, as well as a more general case than the self-recreating ones.

As far as the evolution of the semiotic relation is concerned, one can observe here a ramification in which the syntactic level is separated from the semantic-pragmatic one, regarding the former just to the sensations of the living systems. These sensations -on the syntactic level- consist of self-organised restructurings evoked by the environmental disruptions and limited by the “offer of sensitive mechanisms” in a recursive process of symbolic production. However, on the semantic-pragmatic level, actions are developed according to sensations. Since living systems act according to what such sensations mean in terms of relevance for survival, we could talk about both meaning and action, although in an indissoluble manner. The syntactic difference means -in practice- a difference with regard to the objective of the survival, so that the signs now represent the aptitude of the system towards the environmental conditions (whereas in the self-restructuring systems one talks about reflection, one could talk here about representation).