watch the linked Susan Blackmore talk, and consider the case that DNA is the mechanism for building the replicator for memes.

I think there's a worthwhile discussion to be had about whether intelligence must be constrained to a biological (DNA-based) system. we could, for example, imagine a "biological" system that's not DNA based.. some other, off-world, biology that uses a different mechanism for transmitting genes. something not based on the double-helix. consider, RNA, a single helix. there could also be a triple-helix.

how about a situation in which humans added a third strand to the double-helix, and created an inheritable trait on the third helix. is that "DNA-based"? What if, instead of storing information holographically in DNA, a human used some crystalline structure for storing instructions which the machines which comprise the human body use for building their little machine parts?

Here's a great discussion with a person researching how DNA is used to construct the little machine parts that make organisms: