Astrobiologist Keith Cowing says there are "organisms whose genome can be blown apart by massive doses of radiation only to reassemble it a short time later". If I understand that rightly, is the DNA the cause or is it an effect of our characteristics? We might have had it backwards since that pea plant heredity experiment.
It's both. DNA has, simply, been in the public spotlight because of the genome project. The emphasis on actual expression is much more difficult. The field of interdisciplinary fields of proteomics and bioinformatics have been underway for over a decade and some fields of biology, like development have always had a greater emphasis on expression. It's all related, one simply can't be separated from the other.
One variously sees articles pop up, like "The gene is dead, long live the gene."