Wendy Zuckerman

So when you look at our entire DNA, you roll it out like toilet paper.

Those 20,000 genes are a tiny fraction of the role.

For years, that so-called junk DNA, and more generally, the parts of our DNA that didn't code for proteins, it was like a cipher that many scientists, including Hassi, were trying to decode.

And over the years, they worked out that these mysterious chunks of DNA do loads of important stuff.

Including, get this, coding for not big, complicated proteins, but little baby proteins.

Peptides.

But fast forward to today, and Hassi's team has found a bunch of peptides hanging out in weird parts of our DNA.

His lab likes to give them Yiddish names.

Please tell me there's one called chutzpah.

Mensch.

Hasse's lab has found these peptides in what's called our mitochondrial DNA.

Mitochondria are known as the powerhouses of our cells.

They kind of look like carpet beetle larvae, but what they do is pump out fuel for our body to use for energy.

And in humans, different versions of Hasse's mitochondrial peptides have been linked to lowering our risk of various diseases.

In lab and animal studies, these peptides can affect muscle growth, metabolism, oxidative stress, insulin sensitivity and cognition.

And we just keep finding more peptides.

A study published in May this year found more than 3,000 peptides hiding in the mysterious chunks of our DNA.

And we're not sure what many of them even do.

Hussey is excited that there is this whole world of tiny proteins, actors in the human body that we didn't even know existed.

And he reckons it could change the way that we understand some diseases, possibly opening the door to different kinds of medicine.