Fig. 2.

The probability $1-P$ that a cell will die and the average time $\tau$ it takes to repair a cell, as a function of N_E. The repair time $\tau (N_E)$ is normalised by $\tau (N_E=2)$. Full lines are analytical predictions, and dots are the results of stochastic simulations. The parameters are $\alpha =\gamma =0.01{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$, $N_0=2000$, $N=5\times {10}^6$, L=9, which are reasonable for E. coli. We use f=1 throughout. We have verified that these results are independent of $\alpha$, as predicted by Eqs. (6) and (8).