There is such a trope - I wouldn't call it accurate. We're learning a lot very fast. But DNA (like most biology) is multi-modal and has roles at many differen

There is such a trope - I wouldn't call it accurate. We're learning a lot very fast. But DNA (like most biology) is multi-modal and has roles at many different scales - from the scale of milliseconds to cellular lifetimes, to organismal lifetimes to species' lifetimes, from coding proteins, to regulating what codes proteins, to physical space, to more. There's a lot to learn, but we also know a lot. To me it seems more like a nice middle ground right now - enough to get a truly solid toehold, but also much more to go :)