diff --git a/ansigenome/utils.py b/ansigenome/utils.py
index 6af2ec0..36d5e22 100644
--- a/ansigenome/utils.py
+++ b/ansigenome/utils.py
@@ -4,10 +4,13 @@
 import os
 import re
 import subprocess
-import sys
 import urllib2
 import yaml
 
+import sys
+reload(sys)
+sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')
+
 from jinja2 import DictLoader
 from jinja2.environment import Environment