You can, however, build machines using genes. Eg I met someone who was working on research to come up with sets of genes that implemented low level programming

You can, however, build machines using genes. Eg I met someone who was working on research to come up with sets of genes that implemented low level programming primitives, like "if". When some chemical concentration reaches a certain level, a gene is turned on or off. This is fundamental to how cells work, they're just trying to repurpose the machinery that's already there (if you'll forgive the metaphor). The research I've heard of that I was thinking about here was about splicing genes in such a way that in order to remove it, you will also need to remove genes necessary for reproduction. I'm not a geneticist and it's been a long time since I've read about this type of thing, so if I'm mistaken or if you know more, I'm all ears.