A bacterial strain that was capable of degrading organic sulfur (dibenzothiophene) was isolated by enrichment techniques from the petroleum-contaminated soil collected from Zhongyuan Oil Field. The strain is named ZYX and is gram-positive.This strain undergoes bacilus-coccus morphological change, and forms yellow-pigment glossy circular colonies with 1.5 mm in diameter on average after 2 d incubation on Luria-Bertani(LB) plates. The full-length of 16S rDNA sequence of strain ZYX was determined and analyzed. Strain ZYX is found most relative with the genus of Arthrobacter. The similarity values between ZYX and Arthrobacter sp. P2 is 99.53%. The main morphological, biochemical and physiological features of strain ZYX accord with those of Arthrobacter. It is found that the optimal initial pH for growth is about 7.0, and the optimal concentration of dibenzothiophene(DBT)for growth is 0.10 g/L. Additionally, the results show that the best carbon source and nitrogen source are glycerol and glutamine,respectively.