  Haplogroup N-M231 of human Y chromosome is a common clade from Eastern Asia
to Northern Europe, being one of the most frequent haplogroups in Altaic and
Uralic-speaking populations. Using newly discovered bi-allelic markers from
high-throughput DNA sequencing, we largely improved the phylogeny of Haplogroup
N, in which 16 subclades could be identified by 33 SNPs. More than 400 males
belonging to Haplogroup N in 34 populations in China were successfully
genotyped, and populations in Northern Asia and Eastern Europe were also
compared together. We found that all the N samples were typed as inside either
clade N1-F1206 (including former N1a-M128, N1b-P43 and N1c-M46 clades), most of
which were found in Altaic, Uralic, Russian and Chinese-speaking populations,
or N2-F2930, common in Tibeto-Burman and Chinese-speaking populations. Our
detailed results suggest that Haplogroup N developed in the region of China
since the final stage of late Paleolithic Era.
