Ok, I did learn a little bit about the 6502. I would have learned far more by implementing the emulator itself.

My actual goal was to understand if it was possible to build the equivalent of a rudimentary CPU inside of a living cell. At a high level, the 6502 shows me that most of the circuitry of the chip is not concerned with arithmetic, but rather orchestration and moving data.

Same problem actually exists when trying to map this concept to a cell... the lack of wiring makes this more difficult.