Traces of Y-chromosomal link between Hungarians and geographically distant Uralic and Western Siberian populations. Y-chromosomal link between Hungarians and Uralic and Western Siberian populations

One of the westernmost Uralic speakers are Hungarians who live today in Central Europe, surrounded by the speakers of Indo-European languages. Despite of the proposed West Siberian roots of the Hungarian language, the present-day Hungarian gene pool is very similar to this of the non-Uralic-speaking Central Europeans. However, a limited portion of specific Y-chromosomal lineages from haplogroup N, often associated with the spread of Uralic languages, link modern Hungarians with populations living close to the Ural Mountain range in the border of Europe and Asia. In this study we analyze the phylogenetic structure of haplogroup N3a4 to analyse the genetic connection between these spatially separated populations. We reconstruct the phylogeny of hg N3a4-Z1936 clade and estimate the coalescent times of its sub-clades using 31 high-coverage Y chromosomal sequences. Together with genotyping data of about 5000 samples from 46 Eurasian populations we show the presence of hg N3a4-B539 among Hungarians and in the Ural Mountain region populations, including geographically distant but linguistically closest to them Ob-Ugric-speakers from West Siberia. This sub-clade splits from its sister-branch N3a4-B535, frequent today among Northeast European Uralic speakers, 4000-5000 ya, which is in time frame of the divergence of Ugric languages.