Due to the emerging rise of multi-drug resistant bacteria, the discovery
of novel antibiotics is of high scientific interest. Through their high
chemodiversity of bioactive secondary metabolites, cyanobacteria have
proven to be promising microorganisms for the discovery of antibacterial
compounds. These aspects make appropriate antibacterial screening
approaches for cyanobacteria crucial. Up to date, screenings are mostly
carried out using a phenotypic methodology, consisting of cyanobacterial
cultivation, extraction, and inhibitory assays. However, the parameters
of these methods highly vary within the literature. Therefore, the
common choices of parameters and inhibitory assays are summarized in
this review. Nevertheless, less frequently used method variants are
highlighted, which lead to hits from antimicrobial compounds. In
addition to the considerations of phenotypic methods, this review
provides an overview of developments in the genome-based screening area,
be it in-vivo using PCR technique or in-silico using the recent
genome-mining method. Though, up to date these techniques are a lot less
applied than phenotypical screening.