This article represents the proceedings of a symposium at the 2000 ISBRA Meeting in Yokohama, Japan. The chairs were Hirokazu Yokoyama and David Crabb. The presentations were (1) Roles of vitamin A, retinoic acid, and retinoid receptors in the expression of liver ALDH2, by J. Pinaire, R. Hasanadka, M. Fang, and David W. Crabb; (2) Alcohol, vitamin A, and β-carotene: Adverse interactions, by M. A. Leo and Charles S. Lieber; (3) Retinoic acid, hepatic stellate cells, and Kupffer cells, by Hidekazu Tsukamoto, K. Motomura, T. Miyahara, and M. Ohata; (4) Retinoid storage and metabolism in liver, by William Bosron, S. Sanghani, and N. Kedishvili; (5) Characterization of oxidation pathway from retinol to retinoic acid in esophageal mucosa, by Haruko Shiraishi, Hirokazu Yokoyama, Michiko Miyagi, and Hiromasa Ishii; and (6) Ethanol in an inhibitor of the cytosolic oxidation of retinol in the liver and the large intestine of rats as well as in the human colon mucosa, by Ina Bergheim, Ina Menzl, Alexandr Parlesak, and Christiane Bode.