Deregulated activation of RAS/extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) signaling and defects in retinoic acid receptor (RAR) signaling are both implicated in many types of cancers. However, interrelationships between these alterations in regulating cancer cell fates have not been fully elucidated. Here, we show that RAS/ERK and RAR signaling pathways antagonistically interact with each other to regulate colorectal cancer (CRC) cell fates. We show that RAR signaling activation promotes spontaneous differentiation of CRC cells, while ERK activation suppresses it. Our microarray analyses identify genes whose expression levels are upregulated by RAR signaling. Notably, one of these genes, MKP4, encoding a member of dual-specificity phosphatases for mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases, mediates ERK inactivation upon RAR activation, thereby promoting the differentiation of CRC cells. Moreover, our results also show that RA induction of RAR target genes is suppressed by the ERK pathway activation. This suppression results from the inhibition of RAR transcriptional activity, which is shown to be mediated through an RIP140/histone deacetylase (HDAC)-mediated mechanism. These results identify antagonistic interactions between RAS/ERK and RAR signaling in the cell fate decision of CRC cells and define their underlying molecular mechanisms.KEYWORDS ERK MAP kinase, colorectal cancer, retinoic acid receptor R etinoic acid (RA), an active derivative of vitamin A, plays an important role in the development and homeostasis of many vertebrate tissues through its regulatory effects on cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. Most of these effects are mediated by nuclear retinoid receptors, RA receptors (RARs), and retinoid X receptors (RXRs) (1, 2). The basic mechanism of RAR/RXR-mediated transcriptional regulation relies on the ability of RAR/RXR to recruit transcriptional corepressors and coactivators and involves a series of steps, as follows (2-4). (i) In the absence of ligand, RAR associates with the corepressor complex that mediates transrepression by the recruitment of histone deacetylase (HDAC). (ii) Ligand binding to RAR causes the dissociation of the corepressor complex and the recruitment of the coactivator complexes, which contain histone acetyltransferase, methyltransferase, and kinase and/or ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling activities that decompact repressive chromatin. (iii) Then, the coactivators dissociate, and the mediator complex assembles to recruit RNA polymerase II and the general transcription factors to the promoter, resulting in transcriptional initiation.Transactivation of RAR target genes often induces cell proliferation arrest, cell