The New York Times is running a long piece on one team's efforts in the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition at MIT:

It all started with a brawny, tattooed building contractor with a passion for exotic animals. He was taking biology classes at City College of San Francisco, a two-year community college, and when students started meeting informally early last year to think up a project for a coming science competition, he told them that he thought it would be cool if they re-engineered cells from electric eels into a source of alternative energy. This also entailed building the bacteria itself — redesigning a living organism, using the tools of a radical new realm of genetic engineering called synthetic biology.

The ensuing account tells of the trials and tribulations of a team of budding synthetic biologists that embody the audacity and the grit that iGEM is supposed to be about.

Read the full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14Biology-t.html