text: why are biochemical tests important to microbiology?   when you are studying microbiology (the biology of microbes) you need to understand the processes that make these little critters tick. if you are studying a one-celled organism, then his life is guided not by large systems like humas have (circulatory systems, respiratory systems, digestive systems, etc.) but by small sale biochemical processes. a bacteria cell, for example, absorbes nutrients through it's cell wall. this happens throgh complex biochemical means (chemical reactions between the proteins in the cell wall and other substances external to the cell.)   so, the study of microbiology is inherently the study of biochemical processes. the way to determine the nature of certain microbiological processes is therefore to do lots of biochemical tests and experiments.   it's a challenging subject, but very interesting.