The present invention relates to a method for the production of a variant
lipid acyltransferase comprising the steps of: (i) selecting a parent
enzyme which is a lipid acyltranserase enzyme; (ii) modifying one or more
amino acids to produce a variant lipid acyltransferase; (iii) testing the
activity of the variant lipid acyltransferase on a galactolipid and/or
phospholipid and/or triglyceride substrate; (iv) selecting a variant
enzyme with enhanced activity towards galactolipids compared with the
parent enzyme; (v) providing a Bacillus licheniformis cell; (vi)
transforming the Bacillus licheniformis cell with a heterologous
nucleotide sequence encoding said variant lipid acyltransferase; and
(iii) expressing said variant lipid acyltransferase in the cell under the
control of a promoter sequence. The variant lipid acyltransferase can
undergo post-translations modification, truncation and/or clipping, i.e.,
to remove a signal peptide. In addition, the present invention further
relates to the use of Bacillus licheniformis to express a lipid
acyltransferase, a Bacillus licheniformis host cell comprising a
heterologous lipid acyltransferase and a vector comprising a nucleotide
sequence encoding a lipid acyltransferase operably linked to a promoter
sequence homologous to B. licheniformis.