The Nucleus Working Memory.

Each cell has an area called the Nucleus Working Memory, which is just a WritableInfoString. The cell can compose arbitrary bit strings in this area,^4.10 but in the normal operation of a self-replicating program, it would construct a copy of its genome here. Thus, rather than directly writing instructions one at a time to a new area of memory (as in Tierra, for example), a Cosmos cell copies its genetic information into its own Nucleus Working Memory. When the genome has been copied in this way, the cell may issue a nwm_divide or a nwm_split instruction. These have the effect of transferring the contents of the Nucleus Working Memory into a new cell, which will be placed at a nearby grid position. The former instruction creates a cell which is completely separated from the parent cell (i.e. a new child organism), whereas the latter creates a cell which will remain a member of the same organism (i.e. an extra process in a parallel program: see Section 4.3.9).

In either case, upon division the contents of the Energy Token Store, Promoter Store and Repressor Store are divided equally between parent and child cell. The other main structures of the new child cell (i.e. the Nucleus Working Memory, the Received Message Store and the Communications Working Memory)^4.11 are initially empty.