Wendy Zuckerman

GLP-1s, the blockbuster weight loss drugs.

They mimic an important peptide in our bodies that regulates blood sugar and helps make us feel full.

So peptides are real things in science.

But to know more about the current hype and what scientists are pumped about here, we need to meet this guy.

Hussie Cohen is a professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California.

And he thinks we are at the cusp of a revolution when it comes to peptides.

And to understand why, we need to go back to a time when perhaps you felt like you were personally victimized by Regina George.

Lose My Breath by Destiny's Child is playing on your MySpace page.

Maroon 5 isn't quite so irritating.

And the human genome has just been decoded.

That's right.

It's 2004.

An international team of researchers announces that after 13 years, they've found all the genes hidden in our DNA.

And if you need some biology 101, genes are instructions that tell your body to make proteins.

Proteins like hemoglobin or collagen.

And Hassi remembers finding out just how many genes there are in the human body.

Hussey figured that humans are so complicated.

Some 20,000 genes to make everything in your muscles, bones, brain, eyeballs, sphincters.

Even at the time, one headline said this was unexpectedly low.

And back then, there were clues that there's more to us than that.