They also argue that a very large persistence length implies that the cyanobacteria are stiff enough to largely be unaffected by thermal fluctuations.
Notably, the introduction of reproduction does not introduce another parameter. As I recall, these cyanobacteria reproduce (with doubling time τ ) by adding cells to the filament and that filaments periodically break (rate k+). Thus, the length of a filament is not a model parameter. Rather, length is determined dynamically as ~ N k τ + (10)