Many evidences have demonstrated that protein complexes are overlapping and hierarchically organized in PPI networks. Meanwhile, the large size of PPI network wants complex detection methods have low time complexity. Up to now, few methods can identify overlapping and hierarchical protein complexes in a PPI network quickly. In this paper, a novel method, called MCSE, is proposed based onλ-module and “seed-expanding.” First, it chooses seeds as essential PPIs or edges with high edge clustering values. Then, it identifies protein complexes by ...