Traditionally the cell of an automaton implements the rule table defining the state of the cell at the next time step knowing its present state and those of its neighbors. The cell consequently processes only with states. The novel cell presented here handles data and signals. It is designed as a digital system made up of a processing unit and a control unit. The realization of interactive self-replicating loops will serve as an application example of growing systems. The hardware implementation of these loops takes place in our electronic wall for bio-inspired applications, the BioWall.