Would you mind tabooing algorithm?
A reasonable request. The best substitute word I can come up with is "architecture". Or perhaps "technology". I have in mind a grab-bag of tricks for synchronization, short-loop feedback, redundancy, phase locking, etc., which I think that Nature has reused over and over.
I think "building blocks" would have got your point across clearly to me.
Looking at some of your examples, I'm not sure that having common building blocks makes it easy to reverse engineer and replicate in another substrate. Consider making a genetic system based on phosphorous and nitrogen rather than carbon. Despite understanding the modular nature of genes and how they are stored it would be distinctly non-trivial to find P/N based analogues of DNA and the various proteins used in the transcription of that analogue.
Linky. Quotes: