Cell's knowledge of techniques

[Polyphase Avatron]

As we all know, one of the things that made Cell so dangerous was that he was made from cells from all of the Z-senshi, and this allowed him to know all of their techniques. But this doesn't really make sense.

These kinds of techniques aren't inborn as part of their DNA, they had to be learned (or invented). In some cases, we can even pinpoint the exact point where a character learned a technique, like Goku with the Kamehameha. Learning these things didn't change their DNA, it just changed the information in their brains. I think there were even examples of Cell knowing techniques that the Z-senshi didn't learn until after their DNA must have been taken.

It would be like if you took the DNA of an expert guitar player and cloned them, then that meant that the clone would automatically know how to play guitar at the same level of skill, without having seen or touched a guitar in their lives.

This never really bothered me, because I always just excused it by saying that Toriyama doesn't know how genetics work. But I thought it might be interesting to discuss.

It's possible, of course, that Cell learned these techniques some other way, say Dr. Gero's drone observed all of them being used and then he could have programmed that information into Cell as he was being created, but that doesn't make much sense either. Unless you're a super prodigy like Goku, Trunks, or Buu, you can't learn a technique just by watching it or watching a video recording of it. And even if you are, you would have to have some kind of knowledge of ki usage in the first place to figure it out. I think it's safe to say that Dr. Gero never learned how to use ki in his original body, and Cell was just an embryo at that point, so how would he learn? Did Cell's brain have the equivalent of a video library, where he could just watch clips of all of the techniques being performed and then copy them?

And even if it did, how would that help him know the proper way to manipulate his ki to use each of the techniques? Just going through the hand motions for Kamehameha or Makankosappo won't let you do it.

Yeah, I know I'm really overthinking this, but why not? Can anyone help come up with an explanation?

[Koitsukai]

I guess Gero gathered brain cells where memory was stored, and not just a strand-of-hair-with-DNA kind of cell. And with those kind of cells (how he got them without opening people up is beyond me), the subject was able to surf the memories and techniques of the fighters.

IIRC, when Goku is trying to avoid Cell's kienzan using the tactic he used on Namek, Cell calls him out on it, saying Freeza's cells are telling him about it, like it's some sort of archive that allows him to surf the past events of his donors. With that in mind, then he probably can go deep into his donors past and learn what they can do.
This is contradicted by Cell not knowing about the namekian regeneration ability, of course. But perhaps, in the event that he were to lose an arm, his namekian cells might kick in and tell him how to solve that issue, and he didn't know about it because he never needed it.

Goten was born without knowing how to fly, only with a bunch of SS cells, DNA seems to work like in real-life, so I guess typical cloning isn't the case here.