Eli5: If every living thing has DNA in its cells, and DNA contains the instructions for functions of life, why do our bodies NOT interact with the DNA that we consume from eating plants and animals?
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DNA contains the instructions, but *executing* those instructions is a complex process. You can’t just have DNA floating around and have it do anything: the DNA has to be copied into RNA, which has to bond with another form of RNA in a specific place in your cell, which then has to produce proteins, which then have to actually get to wherever they’re going.
Free DNA can’t do any of this, and it can’t easily get into your cells (which put a lot of effort into keeping foreign DNA out for precisely this reason).
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