It's rather like receiving an incomplete blueprint for a spaceship. All it provides is a long string of diagrams of every stripped-down bit of metal, washer and spring. The genome, then, is a kind of blueprint but not a very informative one. It is a long way from telling us how a living cell actually works. But the real players in life's dynamics are the proteins whose codes are written in the genes.
Proteins are the next level up from genes.
They are the building blocks of the cellular machines that extract energy from food, contract muscles, allow us to see, hear or feel, beat our heart, stimulate our sex drive or make us think. They are nature's nanotechnology, engineering at the scale of atoms and molecules. To get an idea of what marvels are hidden inside your own cells, consider the F1 ATPase. This is a tiny protein engine that is a component of a cellular machine called the mitochondrion. When cells extract energy from food, they strip off the electrons and pipe them down the mitochondrial membrane.