Growing human organs to ease the deadly shortages facing patients desperate for transplants. Deploying organic molecules to store a million times more data than silicon can. Harnessing the unused processing power on your desktop to attack gigantic computational problems, from genetic analysis to spotting hidden customer trends. Massively expanding the data capacity of optical networks to turbocharge the information superhighway. Modifying plants to grow cheap, lifesaving vaccines.

If these sound like far-out, grandly ambitious ideas-well, they are. But they may touch your life sooner than you think, since all of these conceptions are close enough to reality to have received patents in the year 2000. And, as a result of this combination of sweeping vision and nitty-gritty reality, they've been selected by the editors of Technology Review for "5 Patents to Watch," a special section highlighting some of last year's most intriguing and potentially world-changing patents.