The talk of passing down artificial genes reminds me of a manga called Blame! In it, humans (well, the future equivalent) are almost prisoners and slaves to an architecture created by machines that will not stop building.

The reason is because humans had what is called the “net terminal gene” that can access the machine systems. But, the gene has been manipulated out of their biology, so the machines try to systematically wipe out the humans because they register them as foreign invaders.