That's rather the point. Those metabolic networks are not meaningfully separable from "how cells and DNA work".

> We already understand exactly how cells and DNA "work"

I must have read your comment differently than you intended, since understanding exactly how cells and DNA work implies that the first cell v1.0 would have divided as intended and that it would not have taken 5 years of painstaking research for v2.0.

From the article, "Of the seven genes added to this organism for normal cell division, scientists know what only two of them do."

we understand the translation of DNA bases to amino acids, and we once though that was going to be enough to understand inheritance, but we're still unpicking additional mechanisms that regulate gene expression and post translation modification. There's heaps more turtles down there.

...and they also vary across groups of humans. We are not all the same.

Each of us is a n=1 genetic experiment.

Lol what are you talking about