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In the forward osmosis (FO) process, biofouling is well pronounced on the active side where wastewater and seawater are used as feed and draw solution, respectively. However, the biofouling tendencies within the support layer are not clear. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the effect of TEP pre-conditioning on hydophobicity and initial bacterial attachment of FO membrane support layer. Two structurally distinct FO membranes from different manufacturers were pre­conditioned by soaking in artificial sea water filtrates containing size fractioned TEP. The conditioning solution pre-treated with a 0.4 μm pore size filter, contributed to the highest bacterial adhesion rates during bacterial attachment testing in both steady state and cross-flow mode in a lab-scale FO system for both membrane types. CTA-ES support exhibited higher numbers of adhered bacteria when compared to PA-TFC support in a steady state. Conversely, in cross-flow lab-scale testing, a negative impact of fouling on PA-TFC was more apparent than the CTA-ES membrane. This was attributed to the higher porosity and surface roughness of the PA-TFC membrane. Overall, our findings reinforce the potential impact of hydrodynamics conditions and membrane properties on the fouling behavior of FO membrane support layer.

Egyptians are at a crossroad between Africa and Eurasia, providing useful genomic resources for analyzing both genetic and environmental factors for future personalized medicine. Two personal Egyptian whole genomes have been published previously by us and here nine female whole genome sequences with clinical information have been added to expand the genomic resource of Egyptian personal genomes. Here we report the analysis of whole genomes of nine Egyptian females from different regions using Illumina short-read sequencers. At 30x sequencing coverage, we identified 12 SNPs that were shared in most of the subjects associated with obesity which are concordant with their clinical diagnosis. Also, we found mtDNA mutation A4282G is common in all the samples and this is associated with chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia (CPEO). Haplogroup and Admixture analyses revealed that most Egyptian samples are close to the other north Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and European, respectively, possibly reflecting the into-Africa influx of human migration. In conclusion, we present whole-genome sequences of nine Egyptian females with personal clinical information that cover the diverse regions of Egypt. Although limited in sample size, the whole genomes data provides possible geno-phenotype candidate markers that are relevant to the region's diseases.