Screening of acetophenone reduction microorganisms has been carried out and one special strain was ultimately isolated from the soil when DL-1-phenyl alcohol was used as the only carbon source. This strain No. XC35-8 uses DL-1-phenyl alcohol as a growth inducer and gave high conversion and optical selectivity when it was used to reduce acetophenone to S-1-phenyl alcohol. The culture and reduction reaction parameters were investigated in detail and different cosubstrates were added in an attempt to improve the conversion. The results showed that the acetophenone conversion with strain No. XC35-8 reached 83.4% while the ee value of S-1-phenyl alcohol was as high as 99.5% when it was cultured for 30 hours at 30℃ with shaking at 200r/min and 0.1% (volume fraction) 1-phenyl alcohol as the inducer, 5g/L glucose as carbon source and 10g/L tryptone as nitrogen source followed by reaction for 24 hours with an acetophenone substrate concentration of 0.1% (volume fraction) with 6% (volume fraction) of 2-propanol as the co-substrate. 