>>Of course if a cell lacks the basic components to divide its DNA it... won't divide?
The big thing here is that now they know that it is a lack of this particular substance causing the problem. Nobody could have guessed that this was the case. It is part of the debugging process. It provides a path for further discovery. Now they know where to focus their efforts.
Thanks for a great answer. I suppose it's rather quite like discovering a program isn't entering a code path. Knowing that is the first step to figuring out why it doesn't create a side effect at the end. (Metaphors all suck, but...yeah).
The big thing here is that now they know that it is a lack of this particular substance causing the problem. Nobody could have guessed that this was the case. It is part of the debugging process. It provides a path for further discovery. Now they know where to focus their efforts.