Draft:Axel Lange

Axel Lange (born 1955) is a German evolutionary biologist and book author. He researches on open evolutionary developmental biology questions and has published German and English monographs on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis.

Life
Lange studied economics and philosophy at the University of Freiburg, after which he held various management positions in the IT industry. From 2010 to 2018 he studied evolutionary biology at the University of Vienna and completed a PhD with honors in 2018 at the Department of Theoretical Biology under Gerd B. Müller.

Scientific contribution
Lange dealt with the PhD thesis "Evodevo mechanisms of polydactyly formation". A Turing based reaction-diffusion system simulates with thresholds how small cellular changes in digit formation during early limb development as a result of a point mutation for polydactyly lead to the development of different and biased numbers of toes in the phenotype. Another study focus on conceptual issues polydactyly has raised in contributions it has made to the theories of developmental biology, in the study of inheritance, and in evolutionary contexts.

Scientific papers
Polydactyly not only represents an informative case in the study of developmental principles, but it also highlights the necessity for an extended theory of evolution that can account for both continuous and discontinuous forms of phenotypic variation. In this way Lange's evo-devo-contributions provide important content on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES), in particular on discontinuous variation, developmental bias, and the genotype-phenotype relationship.

In their fundamental paper on the structurs, assumptions and predictions of the EES in Proceedings of the Royal Society Ser. B by Kevin Lala and collegues Lange's work on developmental bias is seen as a contribution to the introduction of bias into post-modern evolutionary theory: "Bias is manifest, for example, in the non random numbers of limbs, digits, segments and vertebrae across a variety of taxa". Denis Noble, Eva Jablonka and and collegues mention the importance of gene-maturing multilevel systems in development and emphasise, with reference to Lange's work, that such systems "produce threshold effects that influence the phenotypic outcome". Gerd B. Müller draws attention to the special significance of threshold effects, which Lange and collegues have worked out in the context of the EES. As Stuart Newman and colleagues point out, Lange's model is one of the first to "demonstrate that Turing-type self-organization can occur even in the absence of diffusible activators and inhibitors". With regard to Lange's Turing model, it is emphasised that models such as his „serve for exploring the way in which different genotypic and environmental inputs map into phenotypic variation within and across populations“. Lange had a „major role“ „in the development of non-genetic models of limb development, which are akin to Turing models, however not based on morphogen diffusion but on cell state propagation“.

Critical book reviews
Lange's book "Extending the Evolutionary Synthesis", published by Taylor & Francis in 2023, provides an "excellent	overview	of	a	large	part	of	today’s	theorizing	in	evolutionary	biology".

"It is commendable that Lange discusses and explains the challenges facing evolutionary research in his book." "Evolutionary developmental biology ... is a highly exciting topic that Lange himself has worked on. And when he describes his own field of research, the development of supernumerary fingers and toes in newborns, it is detailed and informative."

Books

 * Axel Lange (2024) Evolutionstheorie im Wandel: Ist Darwin überholt? Springer (2nd updated ed.)
 * Axel Lange (2023) Extending the Evolutionary Synthesis: Darwin’s Legacy Redesigned. CRC Press (English ed. of Lange 2020)
 * Axel Lange (2021) Von künstlicher Biologie zu künstlicher Intelligenz - und dann? - Die Zukunft unserer Evolution. Springer
 * Axel Lange (2020) Evolutionstheorie im Wandel: Ist Darwin überholt? Springer
 * Axel Lange (2012) Darwins Erbe im Umbau - Die Säulen der Erweiterten Synthese in der Evolutionstheorie. Königshausen & Neumann

Articles

 * Brigitte Balink, Axel Lange (2021) Mediation im Lichte moderner Evolutionstheorie. Perspektive Mediation 2021 (3), 204-211. https://doi.org/10.33196/pm202103020401
 * Axel Lange, Hans Leo Nemeschkal, Gerd B. Müller (2018) A threshold model for polydactyly. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 137, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2018.04.007
 * Axel Lange, Gerd B. Müller (2017) Polydactyly in Development, Inheritance, and Evolution. The Quarterly Review of Biology 92 (1), 1-28, 34, 2017. 10.1086/690841
 * Axel Lange, Hans Leo Nemeschkal, Gerd B. Müller (2014) Biased polyphenism in polydactylous cats carrying a single point mutation: The Hemingway model for of digit novelty. Evolutionary Biology, 41 (2), 262-275, 29, 2014. 10.1007/s11692-013-9267-y