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A study published in Communications Biology in 2026 examined the effects of snake skin chemistry and the skin microbiome on Ophidiomyces ophidiicola, the fungus that causes the snake fungal disease known as ophidiomycosis. The researchers used culture-based and culture-independent methods together with genomic, metagenomic analyses and deep neural network modeling.
The findings showed that skin lipids, particularly oleic acid and squalene, could suppress the growth of O. ophidiicola.
New steps with Chryseobacterium
Bacteria such as Chryseobacterium sp. and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, isolated from the skin of wild snakes, also limited the development of the fungus. In contrast, biosynthetic gene clusters found in the O. ophidiicola genome were determined to encode metabolites that could suppress the host’s lipid production.
New steps
The researchers reported that this mechanism could facilitate the fungus’s capacity to cause disease.
The contrastive deep neural network established an almost perfect match between skin lipid and microbiome profiles for both individual snakes and different disease states. Biosynthetic gene clusters in the genomes of bacteria isolated from snake skin overlapped with the metagenomic profiles of wild snakes and were associated with disease status.
University figures
The study revealed the antifungal activity of the diverse lipid environment on snake skin and showed that interactions between bacteria and fungi shape the skin microbiome. The results indicated that the strong relationship between the fungal pathogen, microbiome and skin lipid chemistry may underlie susceptibility to the disease. The research was conducted with contributions from researchers at Middle Tennessee State University, Oregon State University, University of Antwerp, Belmont University, James Madison University, San Diego State University, University of Florida and University of Wisconsin-Madison. The DOI of the article was announced as 10.1038/s42003-026-10820-w.