The phrase 'substitute for the lack of' is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you are describing a situation where something is being used to make up for a missing element, or to replace something that is lacking. For example: The volunteers stepped in to provide a necessary substitute for the lack of available medical staff.
The Hail Mary passes that Christopher Bancroft and others who fought against the sale heaved late in the fourth quarter were no substitute for the lack of basic blocking and tackling back when they were still in the game.
We present a formal architecture for directories of meta-memories required in extended transactive memory systems and propose the use of meta-knowledge to substitute for the lack of tacit group knowledge that exists in small groups.
Assuming that a higher stand density results from a higher number of smaller trees that yield higher relative growth rates and a lower stand density can be explained by fewer larger trees with a lower relative growth (Caspersen et al. 2011), our model promotes the choice of SDI as a substitute for the lack of information on stand age.
In my professional experience, baby boomer parents are more likely to "peerize" with millennials rather than act in a parental manner, placing pressures on the children to find a substitute for the lack of parenting.
Indeed, we wondered whether there were cases where adding one nutrient could substitute for the lack of another.
Under this behavioral paradigm, DmTRPA1 is not necessary to be heat-activated, and thus any TRP channel could substitute for the lack of TRPA1 in Hymenoptera.
I'm aware that, as with all my little obsessions, it substitutes for the lack of a larger purpose (belief in God, the desire to have children, you name it).
One rationalisation for this vis a vis those studies may be that our assumption of a small stem cell fraction may effectively allow for a source of heterogeneity within the population that substitutes for the lack of milieu heterogeneity considered by Anderson et al to be necessary for expression of this phenotype.
Virtual Patient systems have been proposed as a suitable substitute for this lack of exposure.
Since this is not an option for us, let us prove some result that in some sense will substitute the lack of this result.
Studies in which delipidated FCS was substituted for normal FCS suggested that SPS was also able to compensate for the lack of a growth-promoting lipid component.
