Genomic dataset collection, curation and quality control: This study used publicly available genome assemblies. Existing publicly available genome assemblies were downloaded from the National Center for Biotechnology Investigation (NCBI) and the Integrated Microbial Genomes (IMG) database of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute in June 2021. The Genome Taxonomy Database (GTDB) website (release 202) was used to access lists of NCBI assembly accession numbers for the following GTDB-assigned phyla: Nitrospinota, Nitrospinota_A (now called Tectomicrobia), Nitrospinota_B, Nitrospirota, Nitrospirota_A (Leptospirilla). The IMG assemblies were found using the same GTDB taxonomy classifier using the search function on the IMG website. IMG metagenome assemblies that were designated as “public” and “published” were also downloaded for these phyla. Duplicate entries between IMG and NCBI were manually removed.