&quot;Genes&quot; as protein coding regions is a common shorthand, but there&#x27;s another, broader definition of &quot;gene&quot; as &quot;a locus in the genome that bears some responsibility for a trait&quot;.  For instance, the ability to consume lactose post infancy is a trait driven by a mutation not in a protein coding region, but could reasonably called a &quot;gene for lactase persistence&quot;. In general, we don&#x27;t have good bottom-up ways of understanding which regions of the genome are regulatory, much less what that regulation is doing.<p>So according to one definition, it&#x27;s even worse than your 14,234 tons of steel example: it&#x27;s closer to &quot;steel is a mixture of iron and carbon and trace amounts of other dopants, glass is silicon dioxide, concrete is ...&quot; Without even listing the amounts. But by another definition, the genes are, if not a blueprint, at the very least a recipe and ingredient list. &quot;Butter, flour, water, sugar, apples, cinnamon, cloves. Cut 125g butter into flour; if too coarse, continue cutting. Add water to ice. Add water from ice into flour...&quot;<p>The information is clearly there—we have a long, unbroken history of offspring being very similar to their parents, despite having started with only a single, undifferentiated cell. But with the new tools available to us, we&#x27;re starting to have a hope of understanding it, even if we&#x27;re using more brute force than we&#x27;d like.