Axel Lange

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

Life

Lange studied economics and philosophy at the University of Freiburg from 1975-80, after which he held various management positions in the IT industry. From 2010 to 2018 he studied evolutionary biology at the University of Vienna^[1] and completed a PhD with distinction in 2018 at the Department of Theoretical Biology under Gerd B. Müller. Lange lives near Munich and has three grown up children.

Scientific contribution

Lange dealt with the PhD thesis "Evodevo mechanisms of polydactyly formation".^[2] His work demonstrated that the number of additional toes in a population of 317 polydactyl Maine Coon cats is developmentally biased and follow different probabilities. The connection between small cellular changes (bistable random switches) and the formation of new toes was shown in the "Hemingway Model".^[3] Whereas polydactyly can be initiated by genetic mutation, only the consideration of the constructive behaviors of the developmental system in which a genetic change becomes effective can adequatelely explain the biased phenotypic outcomes.

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 numbers of toes in the phenotype.^[4] Predictions of threshold behaviors in the cell groupings coincide closely with the thresholds observed in the polydactyly occurrences seen in the natural population. Developmental threshold effects can be seen as a mechanism that affects the speed of evolutionary change. Threshold based variation in development is a way of rapid response to selectional, mutational, or environmental perturbation.

Another study analyzes the knowledge about polydactyly from antiquity through the Middle Ages to molecular genetics and epigenetic evo-devo research in this day and age. Lange and Müller 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.^[5]

Lange's work provides support for the role of discontinuous variation in phenotypic evolution and the contribution of developmental effects to the origin of phenotypic novelty: complete anatomical entities such as extra or less digits can be added (or lost) in a single step from one generation to the next. The repeated and permanent "ochestration" by natural selection required by the standard theory for the emergence of complex variation is put into perpective.^[2]

Reception

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, in particular on discontinuous variation, developmental bias, and the genotype-phenotype relationship.^{[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]}

Lange's book "Extending the Evolutionary Synthesis",^[14] published by Taylor & Francis in 2023, provides an "excellent overview of a large part of today’s theorizing in evolutionary biology".^[15] It is the first monograph to give an overall impression of the state of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and it's contributors, including Eva Jablonka, Gerd B. Müller, Denis Noble, Armin Moczek, Mary Jane West-Eberhard, James A. Shapiro, Sean B. Carroll, Marc Kirschner, John Odling-Smee, Kevin Lala, David Sloan Wilson, and others, some of whom have been interviewed by the author about their theories.

Publications

Books

• Axel Lange (2023) Extending the Evolutionary Synthesis: Darwin’s Legacy Redesigned. CRC Press
• 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. doi: 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. doi:10.1007/s11692-013-9267-y

External links

• Axel Lange The Third Way of Evolution

• Axel Lange Google Scholar

• Die Rätsel des sechsten Fingers (The riddles of the sixth finger). DERSTANDARD, Wien) 

References

This page was last edited on 24 March 2024, at 22:28