pint small rna pint small rna in bacteria, pint small rna is a small regulatory rna (srna) that is activated during stress and virulence conditions. srnas base-pair with target mrnas and modulate their stability or translation. the expression of phop-activated srna called pint is highly induced during salmonella enterica infection. pint temporally controls salmonella virulence genes. on bacterial internalization it controls the expression of invasion associated effectors (spi-1) through the direct base-pairing with the mrna. later in infection it represses the virulence genes (spi-2) allowing the switch from an invasive state to the state of intracellular replication. pint srnapredicted secondary structure and sequence conservation of pint small rnaidentifiersrfamrf01404other datadomain(s)bacteriasoso:0001263pdb structurespdbe