[Objective] We identified 16S rRNA genes in genomes of prokaryotes.[Methods] We constructed a 3-layer filtering model based on the three features of GC bases content of the gene sequences, 3-base periodicity and Markov chain to recognize the 16S rRNA genes from prokaryotic genomes.[Results] The specificity, sensitivity and Matthews correlation coefficients of the model were 99.58%, 91.60% and 91.49%, respectively.[Conclusion] The results showed that the 16S rRNA genes can be identified efficiently and accurately by using our model.