This gene encodes an enzyme that synthesizes selenophosphate from selenide and ATP. Selenophosphate is the selenium donor used to synthesize selenocysteine, which is co-translationally incorporated into selenoproteins at in-frame UGA codons. [provided by RefSeq, Sep 2010].
Tamura, Yamamoto, Takahata, Sakaguchi, Tanaka, Stadtman, Inagaki: "Selenophosphate synthetase genes from lung adenocarcinoma cells: Sps1 for recycling L-selenocysteine and Sps2 for selenite assimilation." in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 101, Issue 46, pp. 16162-7, (2004) (PubMed).