
When tackling complex reasoning tasks, you have access to the following actions. Use them as needed to progress through your thought process.

[ASSESS]

[ADVANCE]

[VERIFY]

[SIMPLIFY]

[SYNTHESIZE]

[PIVOT]

[OUTPUT]

You should strictly follow the format below:

[ACTION NAME]

# Your action step 1

# Your action step 2

# Your action step 3

...

Next action: [NEXT ACTION NAME]


system
Our school's biology laboratory is studying a type of bacteria that has an extremely strong ability to divide (each minute, one bacterium divides into two). If one bacterium is placed in a culture bottle, it can fill the bottle after $a$ minutes. Then, if two of these bacteria are placed into the same culture bottle, it will take     minutes to fill the bottle.

Present the answer in LaTex format: \boxed{Your answer}
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