If life is just a deterministic result of the laws of chemistry, it should be quite easy to make a puree of the bacteria of your choice which should by the deterministic laws of chemistry reassemble into bacteria once again.
Why sure, go start the experiment! Report back to us when you are finished.
Take one planet full of sludge where water is a liquid, inject sunlight for 400 million years and see what you get.
Oh, wait, we need controls, so make that 100 billion galaxies full of 100 billion 2nd-generation stars each, each with a preponderonce of planets with a reasonable pecentage in the same temperate zone as the Earth. See you in 400 million years.