Antimicrobial resistance continues to rise on a global scale, affecting the 
environment, humans, animals and food systems. Use of natural antimicrobials has 
been favoured over synthetic molecules in food preservation owing to concerns 
over the adverse health effects of synthetic chemicals. The continuing need for 
novel natural antimicrobial compounds has spurred research to investigate 
natural sources, such as bacteria, for antimicrobials. The 
antimicrobial-producing potential of bacteria has been investigated in numerous 
studies. However, the discovery of antimicrobials has been biased towards 
aerobes and facultative anaerobes, and strict anaerobes such as Clostridium spp. 
have been largely neglected. In recent years, genomic studies have indicated the 
genetic potential of strict anaerobes to produce putative bioactive molecules 
and this has encouraged the exploration of Clostridium spp. for their 
antimicrobial production. So far, only a limited number of antimicrobial 
compounds have been isolated, identified and characterised from the genus 
Clostridium. This review discusses our current knowledge and understanding of 
clostridial antimicrobial compounds as well as recent genome mining studies of 
Clostridium spp. focused at identification of putative gene clusters encoding 
bacterial secondary metabolite groups and peptides reported to possess 
antimicrobial properties. Furthermore, opportunities and challenges in the 
identification of antimicrobials from Clostridium spp. using genomic-guided 
approaches are discussed. The limited studies conducted so far have identified 
the genus Clostridium as a viable source of antimicrobial compounds for future 
investigations.