Carl, my understanding is that the other genes are shared between the two species and therefore would not need edited. Just like if you were making a person.out of an orangutan sample, you would only need to edit the few genes that are different to do so.
Keith
There are lots of more or less significant differences in most of the shared genes, since the two species aren't very close. However, most of these differences don't affect the phenotype, plus many genes seem to have no (known) function whatsoever. Figuring out which genes do affect the phenotype is a big challenge.
A sequenced genome and actual DNA in a live cell are two very different things.
Full-genome sequencing means a bunch of DNA is extracted (from fossils, in this case) and read, and if it's well-preserved, i.e. if there are plenty of fragments, say, over 10 000 base pairs long, it can be assembled into a genome by supercomputers without too many mistakes, usually using a reference genome of a related species as a helpful template. A wolf genome is about 2.5 billion base pairs long. There are plenty of repeating fragments, so smaller pieces cause more mistakes. A rough comparison would be, you can restore text reatively easily and accurately if you have a dozen identical books cut up into random fragments ranging from a paragraph to a couple of pages, but not if they are cut up into pieces 2-3 words long. So that sequenced DNA is a computer file. Essentially a text with some formatting. Fancy formatting if it's a modern chromosome-level assembly, nevertheless. A long way from actual DNA.
We can compare the dire wolf text with the wolf text, find the corresponding genes, assemble ("cook", in a lab) short fragments repesenting the differences in specific genes, and replace the corresponding stretches of DNA from a fresh wolf cell with dire wolf variants using the CRISPR-Cas9 "scissor" enzyme. So technically, they are regular wolves with several dire wolf genes copypasted into ther genome. Similarly, the "mammoths" they are hoping to "reconstruct" will be hairy elephants with perhaps a few other select mammoth phenotype traits.
None of the technologies that were used are brand new, but it's a lot of good work, and a lot of money. Pinpointing specific genes responsible for specific phenotypical traits is tedious and expensive. In fact, Colossal's previous creation, the mammoth mice, was probably a bigger challenge, technologically, but less PR-worthy. These technologies are routinely used in labs around the world but it's usually with very unimpressive creatures such as fruit flies.
And these wolves being put on "endangered" lists or released into the wild seems like a far-fetched concern since formally they are lab animals, and animal rights fascists (or rather, the budget thieves they are employed by) have plenty of other, legally easier options for actual wild animals (orcas, wolves, sea otters, etc) to weaponize = monetize.
