Earlier this week, we considered the fate of NYC’s street rats after Sandy. In the New York Times today, Benedict Carey writes about “smaller but still important casualties” of the extreme storm this week: thousands of lab rats and mice, “genetically altered for use in the study of heart disease, cancer and mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia, that drowned in basement rooms at a New York University research center in Kips Bay.” The collection is considered “one of the largest and most valuable of its kind in the country.” They were housed in colonies in the cellar of the Smilow Research Center, on 1st Avenue near 30th Street.