This : 
youtube: dna replication animation
plus
matt (of 'illustrated PhD fame) Hunting down my son's killer
plus
books on complexity
=>  mind blown BIGTIME.

excerpt for #2 above:

Codons and the standard genetic code

In computing, most computers run on the x86 instruction set.
Remarkably, in life, there is also a dominant instruction set--the standard genetic code, as described in the DNA codon table.
The genetic code is an instruction set for making proteins by chaining together individual amino acids.
The genetic code is made up of instructions called codons.
Each codon is a three-letter sequence in DNA that encodes either an amino acid to insert or the command "stop construction of this protein."
For example, the codon TTG means "insert a Leucine."
With four letters in the alphabet, there are 4³ = 64 possible codons, but there are only 25 genetic instructions, since some codons encode the same amino acid and several encode "stop."
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for all the little bits I knew about  genetics, this paragraph really really tied them all together into one big flash of light !!