Simple concept, and yet from it there is nearly infinite variation to make molecular machines (protein enzymes) that do everything living things do.
The big breakthrough in biology will be figuring out just how far down the rabbit hole you have to go as far as interlocking systems of control and regulation, some of which I am sure we have no idea about yet, just as we didn't know much about how much little micro RNA’s were doing until a couple decades ago.
DNA is a tool but exactly how that tool affects the system is largely a guess, as of now. When I was a kid Lyellian stuff ruled but it flunked because the premise didn’t match the results, the death of many reputations.