The article explores cognitive and linguistic aspects of representation of gene editing techniques in scientific discourse providing analysis of linguistic and extralinguistic factors which determine the writer’s choice of nomination. Communicative purpose and target audience are defined as prevalent reasons. In the focus of attention are genre stratification and peculiarities of research papers and popular-science articles and blogs. The article provides comparative analysis of structural and semantic characteristics of headlines, which serve as communicative and pragmatic focus. Pragmatic focusing enables the reader to identify text elements giving prominence to scientific significance and novelty of the results of research, which can facilitate automatic annotation.