As per a recent statement by NASA, researchers at the agency’s Ames Research Center in California were successful in recreating three of the basic chemical building blocks of the genetic material essential for existence and continuance of life on Earth.

The agency informed that the team of researchers was able to reproduce uracil, cytosine, and thymine. These three occur in the genetic information contained in ribonucleic (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic (DNA) acids.

The laboratory where the test was performed had conditions that simulated the extreme environment of space, it said.

Researchers for the experiment placed a sample of ice on a substrate in a chamber at minus 440 degrees Fahrenheit. It was then exposed to high-energy ultraviolet radiation emitted by a hydrogen lamp.

The photons present in the radiations broke the chemical bonds present in the ice, which can be recombined to form new molecules such as the components of RNA and DNA.

The central question of the research was whether the molecule pyrimidine could persist in the space environment and whether it could participate in chemical reactions that convert it into more complex organic molecules.

As per researchers, Pyrimidine is a ring-shaped molecule composed of carbon and nitrogen. It forms the basic structure of uracil, cytosine and thymine.

Researchers said that Pyrimidine has been identified in meteorites, but they are still unclear of its origin. There are possibilities that Pyrimidine would have formed in a similar manner as another type of carbon-rich molecules, which formed in the last death throes of red giant stars.

Ames researcher Scott Sandford said, “Nobody understands how life got started on Earth. Our experiments suggest once the Earth formed, many of building blocks of life were likely present from beginning. Since we are simulating universal astrophysical conditions, same is likely wherever planets are formed”.