{"id":234593,"date":"2026-04-04T02:48:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T07:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/seed-banks-may-complicate-gene-drives-aimed-at-controlling-weeds"},"modified":"2026-04-04T02:48:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T07:48:19","slug":"seed-banks-may-complicate-gene-drives-aimed-at-controlling-weeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/seed-banks-may-complicate-gene-drives-aimed-at-controlling-weeds","title":{"rendered":"Seed banks may complicate gene drives aimed at controlling weeds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/seed-banks-may-complicate-gene-drives-aimed-at-controlling-weeds.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Gene drives\u2014a genetic engineering approach that quickly spreads specific genetic changes throughout a population, whether to kill it off or add a new trait\u2014may have potential for controlling weeds. But so far, gene drives have primarily been studied in mosquitoes, and have yet to be deployed in the real world.<\/p>\n<p>In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers modeled how a gene drive would proceed in plants. Their simulations suggest that a gene drive\u2019s success may hinge on seed banks\u2014underground reservoirs of seeds that can germinate years or even decades later. Without proper consideration, they found, these stored seeds can slow down or even doom the gene drive, because they continually reintroduce plants without the gene drive into the population.<\/p>\n<p>Modeling studies like this one can help scientists design successful gene drives in plants and discover and mitigate potential problems before deployment in the wild, the researchers said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gene drives\u2014a genetic engineering approach that quickly spreads specific genetic changes throughout a population, whether to kill it off or add a new trait\u2014may have potential for controlling weeds. But so far, gene drives have primarily been studied in mosquitoes, and have yet to be deployed in the real world. In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,45,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-finance","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}