Critical slowing down of growing cell dynamics.

a. Growing cell numbers over time in individual simulations (blue-green lines) and averaged between them (red line) reveals persistent dampening oscillations in the critical regime. b. Mean absolute autocorrelations near the critical regime. Δt, lag time after onset of toxin production. Toxin production rates with three zeroes indicate oscillatory solutions that converge slowly to the regimes of exponential growth or extinction. Vertical dashed line indicates peak lineage-growth rate mutual information; see Fig 4. N = 100 simulations for each toxin production rate.