Operons are primarily a bacterial phenomenon, not commonly observed in 
eukaryotes. However, new research indicates that operons are found in higher 
organisms as well. There are instances of operons found in C. elegans, 
Drosophila melanogaster and other eukaryotic species. We developed a prototype 
using positional, structural and gene expression information to identify 
candidate operons. We focused our efforts on "trans-spliced" operons in which 
the pre-mRNA is trans-spliced into individual transcripts and subsequently 
translated, as widely observed in C. elegans and some instances in Drosophila. 
We identify several candidate operons in Drosophila melanogaster of which two 
have been subsequently molecularly validated.