Dr Diego Márquez

Dr Diego Márquez

School of Biosciences
Research Fellow

Contact details

Twitter
@DiegoMa_rquez
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Address
School of Biosciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Dr Diego Márquez is a Plant Physiologist who combines theoretical biophysics and experimental approaches to develop mechanistic models for gas exchange, carbon fixation, and hydraulic systems in plants. His current research focuses on CO2 gradients and resistances to CO2 diffusion in mesophyll's intercellular air space and liquid volume.

Qualifications

  • PhD in Plant Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (2021)
  • MSc, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile (2013)
  • Agronomic Engineering, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile (2010)

Biography

Dr Diego Márquez is a Research Fellow in the lab of Dr Florian Busch at the University of Birmingham, working on the role of mesophyll CO2 diffusion in photosynthesis. He received his PhD in 2021 from the Australian National University for his research on water and CO2 leaf gas exchange dynamics. Later, Dr Márquez took up a postdoctoral fellowship in Professor Graham Farquhar's lab, working on the physiology of plant transpiration and humidity gradients in the air spaces of leaves. Prior to his doctoral studies, He completed his Master's and undergraduate degrees in Agronomic Engineering at the University of Chile. Before pursuing his academic career, Dr Márquez worked for several years in the irrigation, plant nutrition, and viticulture industries.

Research

Research interests

  • Developing mechanistic models for plant physiology using theoretical biophysical and experimental approaches, with a focus on integration and feedback mechanisms. (Plant Physiology and Biophysics)
  • Understanding the role of stomatal and non-stomatal constraints to leaf transpiration and assimilation and their interactions with environmental factors such as light, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric CO2 concentration. (Plant Physiology and Environmental Biology)
  • Investigating the spatiotemporal dynamics of CO2 in the mesophyll and its impact on photosynthesis. (Plant Physiology and Biochemistry)
  • Exploring the complex water-soil-plant-atmosphere interactions that underlie plant drought stress responses. (Plant Physiology and Ecology)

Find out more about the Plant Physiologist group who creates tools for scientists working in this field and related areas.

Publications

Full list available on google scholar

Highlighted publications:

  • Márquez, Stuart-Williams, Cernusak and Farquhar (2023) - Assessing the CO2 concentration at the surface of photosynthetic mesophyll cells. New Phytologist. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.18784

We present a set of equations to estimate the CO2 concentration at the surface of photosynthetic mesophyll cells from independent measurements of adaxial and abaxial gas exchange. Additionally, we showed the magnitude of errors inherent in mixing the adaxial and abaxial fluxes to calculate gas exchange parameters.

We demonstrated the presence of unsaturated conditions within the leaf when the leaf is subjected to a high air saturation deficit, proving the existence of a non-stomatal limitation to transpiration. We also showed that the unsaturation is not accompanied by a significant decrease in the leaf water potential, which indicates significantly high water-potential differences between the cytosol and the cell wall in mesophyll cells.

We present a better representation of leaf surface fluxes and a more precise determination of the CO2 concentration at the substomatal cavity, showing that neglecting small fluxes significantly affects the gas exchange parameter estimations. We demonstrate that measurements performed without accounting for small fluxes can overestimate CO2 concentration within the leaf by more than 100 ppm. 

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