Simulated DNA

I'm not sure if we have the computing power to do this yet, but we might with distributed networks. DNA is made of discrete blocks of information that should work well with a computing environment. All environmental inputs/stimuli would have to be synthetic as the simulated creature(nobody said we had to start with humans) would not have access to the outside world. If we started with, say, a fruit fly, we could eventually modify it's 'instincts' to achieve useful goals, such as search functions. Care will need to be taken to avoid replication and exessive learning capabilities. Not only would this begin the path toward true AI, it would help us understand DNA and biological structures. Modifications/mutations would be easy to introduce and test in a purely simulated and controlled environment with variable time scales.