Drug addiction is characterized by compulsive drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior and by a high rate of relapse even after long periods of abstinence. Although the mesocorticolimbic dopamine (DA) pathway is thought to play a critical role in drug craving and relapse, recent evidence also implicates glutamate, an amino acid known to activate DA neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) via ionotropic receptors. To assess whether increased glutamate transmission in the VTA is involved in cocaine-primed drug-seeking behavior, we tested rats in a between-session reinstatement model. They were trained to press a lever for cocaine infusions (0.25 mg/ infusion) accompanied by compound stimuli (light and tone) under a modified fixed-ratio 5 reinforcement schedule. Cocaine-primed reinstatement was conducted after lever pressing was extinguished in the absence of the conditioned stimuli. Blockade of ionotropic glutamate receptors in the VTA by local application of kynurenate (0.0, 1.0, 3.2, and 5.6 mg/side) dose-dependently decreased cocaineprimed reinstatement, whereas sucrose-primed reinstatement of sucrose-seeking behavior was unaffected. In addition, the minimum effective dose for decreasing cocaine-primed reinstatement was ineffective in the substantia nigra. Together, these data indicate that glutamatergic activation of the VTA is critical for cocaine-primed reinstatement. Because such activation can increase impulse flow in DA neurons and thus DA release in mesocorticolimbic targets, this glutamate-DA interaction in the VTA may underlie cocaine-primed relapse to cocaine-seeking behavior.

The degree to which surface motile bacteria explore their surroundings is influenced by aspects of their local environment. Accordingly, regulation of surface motility is controlled by numerous chemical, physical, and biological stimuli. Discernment of such regulation due to these multiple cues is a formidable challenge. Additionally inherent ambiguity and variability from the assays used to assess surface motility can be an obstacle to clear delineation of regulated surface motility behavior. Numerous studies have reported single environmental determinants of microbial motility and lifestyle behavior but the translation of these data to understand surface motility and bacterial colonization of human host or environmental surfaces is unclear. Here, we describe the current state of the field and our understanding of exogenous factors that influence bacterial surface motility.

Bacterial surface motility, such as swarming, is commonly examined in the laboratory using plate assays that necessitate specific concentrations of agar and sometimes inclusion of specific nutrients in the growth medium. The preparation of such explicit media and surface growth conditions serves to provide the favorable conditions that allow not just bacterial growth but coordinated motility of bacteria over these surfaces within thin liquid films. Reproducibility of swarm plate and other surface motility plate assays can be a major challenge. Especially for more "temperate swarmers" that exhibit motility only within agar ranges of 0.4%-0.8% (wt/vol), minor changes in protocol or laboratory environment can greatly influence swarm assay results. "Wettability", or water content at the liquid-solid-air interface of these plate assays, is often a key variable to be controlled. An additional challenge in assessing swarming is how to quantify observed differences between any two (or more) experiments. Here we detail a versatile two-phase protocol to prepare and image swarm assays. We include guidelines to circumvent the challenges commonly associated with swarm assay media preparation and quantification of data from these assays. We specifically demonstrate our method using bacteria that express fluorescent or bioluminescent genetic reporters like green fluorescent protein (GFP), luciferase (lux operon), or cellular stains to enable time-lapse optical imaging. We further demonstrate the ability of our method to track competing swarming species in the same experiment.

Health organizations worldwide have warned that we are on the cusp of a "post-antibiotic era," necessitating new approaches to combat antibiotic resistant infections. One such approach is the development of antibiotic adjuvants, which have little or no inherent antibiotic activity at their active concentrations but instead potentiate the activity of antibiotics against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Recently, we demonstrated that meridianin D, a natural product originally reported to have activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, possesses the ability

exhibits flagellum-mediated swimming in liquid and swarming on hydrated surfaces under diverse nutrient conditions. Prior studies have implicated a phosphodiesterase, DipA, in regulating these flagellum-mediated motilities, but collectively, the necessity for DipA was unclear. In this study, we find that the medium composition conditionally constrains the influence of DipA on flagellar motility. We show that DipA exhibits more influence on minimal medium supplemented with glutamate or glucose, where flagellar motility was negated for the mutant. Conversely, a-deficient mutant exhibits flagellar motility when growing with LB Lennox broth and minimal medium supplemented with Casamino Acids. Swarming under these rich medium conditions occurs under elevated levels of c-di-GMP. We also demonstrate that the influence of DipA upon swimming often differs from that upon swarming, and we conclude that a direct comparison of the motility phenotypes is generally valid only when characterizing motility assay results from the same medium composition. Our results are consistent with the explanation that DipA is one of several phosphodiesterases responding to the nutrient environment sensed by On minimal medium with glutamate or glucose, DipA is dominant; however, on rich medium, the necessity of DipA is fully negated. Motile and ubiquitous bacteria such as can quickly colonize surfaces and form biofilms in numerous environments such as water distribution systems, soil, and the human lung. To effectively disrupt bacterial colonization, it is imperative to understand how bacteria regulate motility in these different growth environments. Here, we show that the phosphodiesterase DipA is not required for flagellar motility under all nutrient conditions. Thus, the maintenance of intracellular c-di-GMP levels to promote flagellar motility or biofilm development must be conditionally regulated by differing phosphodiesterases in variation with select nutrient cues.